I personally haven't ruled out
Blue Iris. I may give it a go just to test it.
It's just that if my old syno or a new one can handle it:
- that'll be easier on the electric bill
- I can tap into the DS from any tablet, phone, computer, via LAN or WAN (mavericks/java7 is an issue until we get the dedicated surveillance app)
- it is a little bit more of an unbox & done solution
I can setup a compact DS no problem where broadband, cable, phone are distributed in small rack in the basement. Vs setting up a (compact) pc which then also is going to require a keyboard, mouse & monitor - at a minimum for setup, tweaking and troubleshooting. It is less install friendly for me. And I don't just want to put the load on a pc in the home office and have all that camera traffic up the line to the bedrooms. If anything I've thought about separating all surveillance traffic on its own dedicated network; and just switching onto that for viewing purposes. Depending on the load I will end up with. One 3mp camera isn't bad. Several starts to be a bit of traffic. I have yet to measure the net transfer rates.
Anyway, remote access to a synology is easy. To a regular pc is possible via screen sharing, but
tools differ per phone, tablet, computer you are using. VNC and the like from a phone & tablet isn't the greatest. There may be a blue iris app though that alleviates a lot of that.
I've also briefly looked at the inexpensive NVR (network video recorders) from Hikvision and other brands, which seem favorable up to 720p & 1080p but have their own limits in FPS (just like a syno ds) they can handle in terms of # of cameras and # of frames per second once you start looking at 1080p, 3mp, ...