I purchased NCH Switch Sound Converter Plus version 1.13 some years ago and I have been happy with my purchase until now. I recently looked into obtaining an update and the NCH website stated that an upgrade price would be applicable for software purchased more than three months ago. The updated versions list a series of bug fixes and extremely limited additional features. I used the upgrade form to log in my user name and activation code and was semi-impressed by the listed discount for an upgrade until I exited from my browser and checked the price for new customers. The prices were the same. I then used the upgrade form again and entered rubbish user number and activation code. I was directed to the same previous pricing page. NCH mislead existing customers that a discounted upgrade is available for them and their disregard for whether a customer is an existing customer or not is patently blatent. Why should I as an existing customer pay the same price as a new customer for an upgrade when 99% of the changes are fixes of bugs in the software. I am not impressed and NCH has lost a returning customer.

You must be wary in purchasing from NCH Software. I purchased some of their products in July of 2008. Website & activation process were *very* confusing but I got through it after a determined hour. Redownloaded from the website 1 Jan 2009 to reinstall on a new computer. Discovered they had snuck the version numbers up by a fractional decimal point to correct some bugs in the software AND that you must repurchase their software all over again for any new versioning, including their fixing their own bugs. To force you to do this, they won't even supply on their website the original point release you purchased. Purchasing documentation does NOT make it clear that you purchased only a particular fractional point release and are not entitled to bug fixes. Summary: avoid. They are nickle and dime artists. They are not a vendor you can rely on and have a relationship with.

What can I say, its very rare these days to find software that is truly 100% free with no ads or spyware even without pressure to go pro... but thats where NCH Software come in.

Eyeline is a simple yet effective CCTV software that has many of the features a more professional software would have, such as time and date stamped recordings, motion detection even if camera doesnt support it (software controlled), webaccess page with live broadcasting over the internet, and support for normal DIY based cameras with the use of a capture card.

This software works with a lot of configurations, you can use professional CCTV capture cards with hardware decoding, or you can hop to your local DIY store purchase a cheap Black&White camera and stick it into your PC via a tv tuner card or usb capture card and Eyeline will still be able to use it.

Webaccess is a super feature you can log into the page to view/delete recordings, watch the stream live in a media player or you can watch the stream via the webpage using a refreshed JPEG image should the pc you are using webaccess on can't support the live AVI file.

as far as recordings go, eyeline clevery date&time stamps the file and also timestamps any motion that was detected if you have that switched on. From this section you can also filter your recordings by date and time should you wish to get access to a video file quickly, and on top of that if you have NCH's Expressburn installed (also free) you can dump the recording to a CD (possibly DVD also) as the progrmas link together to make the whole process seamlessly easy.
When you setup the camera for recording, you can choose the resolution, framerate and codec too (Ideal as you may wish to use something like DivX or a speciality codec). You can also name the camera as well.

Motion detection is also very good, its software controlled, and will cause the software to record only when someone has been detected. The sensetivity here can also be controlled. and there is an option to switch it on or off as desired.

It works as intended but some TV cards (such as the hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM) have a habit of switching back to the tuner rather than S-Video/composite upon reboot. This of course causes havoc as eyeline will start with the pc but will record a blue screen! luckily though there is a way around it all you do is follow these steps:

1. Open notepad
2. Type in C:\Progra~1\WinTV\WinTV2k.exe -c500 -nss -mOff
3. Underneath that line type exit
4. Go file save as and swap the file typ from .txt to all files *.*
5. Enter cctv.bat as the filename
6. Change to the C:\ drive
7. Click save
8. Open win tv
9. Open up the channel suite, and manually add the S-Video channel and map it as number 500.
10. Save and close that, then close wintv.
11. Finally goto my computer, then C:\documents and settings\\start menu\programs\startup
12. Right click and goto new then shortcut
13. Go through and browse when asked for the batch file named cctv.bat in C:\ and finish the shortcut.

Thats it, when the pc starts that script will run and force wintv to swap the channel to S-Video.

On top of that, using your own cheap camera for example the colour outdoor nightvision one from maplin, and a TV card like the WinTV PCI-FM heres how to conenct up your own DIY CCTV Surveilance:

The camera's yellow plug goes into an adaptor to convert it to S-Video then that plugs into the S-Video port on the Tuner card.
The white plug can be left unplugged as eyeline doesnt record or use audio. Inside eyeline if you click add camera and choose the WinTV PCI-FM, and follow the naming and settings successfully, you will then find the camera appear ont he left and the rightand should be showing its output. Thats it your camera is setup, if you need more then you can add another WinTV but its probably better to look for a 4 channel card from the likes of ebay or professional CCTV stores.

I fully reccommend the software, and hope this review helps people into installing a Home CCTV kit without breakign the bank, as the whole setup cost me a mere £40 ( £10 for camera, £20 for win tv, £10 in cables to plug from camera to wintv).