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Comment by disruptiveink | Hacker News Reader

Usually I would agree with you, but this is an incredibly common initialism, used by not just people in the industry, but also by consumers. Sure, it may not be as widespread as VHS (global) or API (tech-adjacent), but anyone who is in the market for this software already knows what NVR means.

Most people would know the term from either being quoted or looking up CCTV solutions, all of which, unless they're fully "cloud-based", come with a component that is called the NVR. You wouldn't even consider this if you weren't aware of the concept. If NVR means nothing to you, Network Video Recorder doesn't mean anything to you either. This is meant to be a replacement for closed and inflexible hardware boxes that are sold together with security cameras, and the name of those boxes are "NVRs".

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As a consumer I disagree. Never heard of "NVR" but I can suss out what "network video recorder" means from context.

NVR is to distinguish it from DVR, Digtal Video Recorder (ironically it's not really digital, more like analog) It's much cheaper than NVR, because the camras are simple and diffrere the encoding to the DVR unit. And there XVR wich can combine both Network and Digital cameras

Which is odd because the first time I heard the term DVR was in the late 1990's, referring to the box that was used to record TV signals digitally for playback and/or ad-skipping. The term distinguished it from things such as VCRs, which recorded in analog, on tape. Those DVRs were, in fact, digital.

If the recorder uses digital video as its storage, it's a real DVR, even if the video input is that weird HD variant of NTSC that's everywhere in security cameras

As a video professional, with many devices for recording video both at baseband and via ip, and responsible for delivering audio and video streams via networks to tens of millions of people, I had no idea what “NVR” meant.

I don’t believe video professional equates to security professional. Would not expect someone who is a video professional to know NVR but at the same time if you don’t know what an NVR is I would not expect someone to be using this software. The entry point into this space is an NVR.

“incredibly common initialism, used by not just people in the industry, but also by consumers”

Consumers are a wide range of people. 99 percent who have never heard

NVR is a niche term for a tiny number of people in a tiny industry.

Niche term yes but if you don’t know what an NVR is you probably don’t want to go down the road of Frigate. It is a lot more common than you might think these are traditionally deployed in most small biz.

I don’t believe video professional equates to security professional.

Just stop. You're wrong, you're defending an indefensible point, and even if you "win," there's no upside for you.

Signed, someone else who's interested in this field and in Frigate in particular, and who had no idea what "NVR" stood for.

Sorry you took offense. I believe in a thread about initialism that some forms are expected based on the nature of the content. And specifically in this case, I am not sure what a video professional has to do with someone who works in security. So no I don’t need to stop and to be frank if you don’t know what a NVR is Frigate is most likely not a great solution but it also might be and you will learn a lot!

Are you involved with the Frigate project, personally?

Please consider that we're not all English-speaking, and that such terms may be unknown to people who aren't from your culture, even if we do understand your language. CCTV could mean "China Central TeleVision" for instance ;-)

In the context of surveillance cameras it is perfectly clear what CCTV stands for, and if it is an unknown to someone because they are not familiar with the english language it is also perfectly reasonable to just force them to look it up like they would any other english word they are unfamiliar with.

Acronyms are not the same as the English language as they are not words by themselves but compressions. "Closed-circuit television" is self-evident to a reader; CCTV isn't. And "in the context", yes, but readers are not necessarily experts in their fields. This is why many news publications usually expand acronyms.

So to be clear, I think that it would make sense for Frigate to define NVR the first time they use it on their site. However, this isn't a news publication and I really don't think it's unreasonable to expect any serious visitor to the Frigate site to be expert enough to know what an NVR is.

> Most people would know the term from either being quoted or looking up CCTV solutions

I'm not sure why you're assuming most people ever requested a quote or looked up CCTV solutions. I sure haven't.

But the site is for software managing... CCTV solutions.

I didn't know what NVR meant either but it seems reasonable for Frigate to assume 90% of the people coming across their site would be given the context.

Hard disagree. I've just started looking at some home monitoring and was extremely frustrated by this assumption because literally everyone assumes you already know. Home Assistant documentation uses it, frigate's home page uses it, pages like this use it. It's not ubiquitous enough in the vernacular to simply be a proper noun (eg nobody cares that "LASER" is an acronym).

I finally had to look it up on Wikipedia so I could understand what they were even referring to and "Network Video Recorder" was much clearer as to what the component was. Overall it creates barrier to entry where everyone operates on the assumption that you're only shopping because you're already a customer.

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