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Longtime BI fan/customer - BI3, BI4, BI5 maybe?

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 3:09 am
by sbnsbn
I have been using BI for many years. (BI3 and now BI4) I have recommended BI to several friends who are also customers.

Currently running an instance of BI4 w/30 cams(mostly POE) in a W10 VM on a relatively fast host also running W10. ROCK SOLID and PAIN FREE. (I hope I haven't jinxed it!)

I have been paying BI support with the plan to move to BI5 - once all the new version 5 issues/creepy crawlers/bugs have been exterminated.

I don't want endure PAIN/TROUBLE/WASTED TIME wrestling with a ground swell of BI5 issues/creepy crawlers/bugs.

BI5 has been released for a good amount of time. But from reading this forum - it seems obvious BI5 is not really too pain free and stable yet.

Am I wrong to keep waiting?

What am I missing? What are the most compelling reasons to move from BI4 to BI5?

Re: Longtime BI fan/customer - BI3, BI4, BI5 maybe?

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 6:34 pm
by TimG
I can only tell you that it works well here, and that 5 > 4 so that must be good ;)

I guess it really depends if you need any of the new functionality, but if you pay for the support plan, then it shouldn't cost you anything extra. Do you have a different pc that you could try the BI5 demo on ? It has some missing functionality - I think direct to disk recording doesn't work - but you could test it on a different pc without breaking your existing installation. UI3 is very good on local pc's.

HeneryH is staying with BI4 though, so it can't be that bad :mrgreen:

Re: Longtime BI fan/customer - BI3, BI4, BI5 maybe?

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 7:07 pm
by terk
I switched from the latest version of 4 to 5 a month or two ago, mainly to get push notifications to work again. I have no regrets as 5 seems to work just as well for me as 4 did. I turn off the autoupdate feature and give versions a while of seeing what issues others run into. I only update if it's been relatively quiet for a week or two after an update and really only if there is a bug fix or new feature in the update that would be useful.

Re: Longtime BI fan/customer - BI3, BI4, BI5 maybe?

Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 2:33 am
by sbnsbn
Thank you for your reply.
TimG wrote: Thu May 14, 2020 6:34 pm direct to disk recording doesn't work -
Missing direct to disk recording - alone - I think would be a big deal. Without direct to disk recording I would need probably 2x CPU.

Is support for direct to disk recording supposed to work now? Or is support for direct to disk recording a planned enhancement?

Apples to Apples - camera system 100% same
Regarding CPU resources -
Does BI5 use/require same or greater or significantly greater CPU?

Re: Longtime BI fan/customer - BI3, BI4, BI5 maybe?

Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 1:13 pm
by TimG
Whoah !

D2D works fine in BI5 ! I was trying to think what might not work in Demo mode.

My cpu loading has gone down, so much that I recently changed my IP cams from H264 to H265, and I still have less cpu load than I did with BI4.