Hey microsoft, me too in the same biz as your dad. We are about to open a new wing of our 20 yr old institution for which i am too working on similar options for CCTV + DVR. We already have more than 20 CCTV cams in our existing structure.
These CCTV dealers are dumb and most of them selling imported Chinese/Taiwan products at insane prices as you mentioned.
I am in touch with an old dealer who would be giving me quote of the products from his new reliable tie-up. Will see if it's any better than the existing deals.
In the meanwhile, i worked myself with the following option -
1) Buy the cheapest camera available. Somewhat like the following which is available for 500/- or so.
eBay India: SECURITY CCTV COLOUR CAMERA WITH AUDIO (item 250500876565 end time 26-Sep-2009 02:52:13 IST)
The technical specifications of this camera and the camera your dealer providing is exactly same, so no loss of picture quality.
2) Buy an audio-video cable along with a power cable (to power the camera). You may skip the audio cable if audio is not needed for certain area.
Connect the power cable to the electrical supply.
3) Now if wish to have the output of the camera on
a) a TV - Buy a 14" CTV for 2-3k and plug the video cable to the video in of the TV and enjoy the live view. But since you will be having more than 2 cameras, you will need a switcher to connect 8 video cables of the camera to the TV. The cost of the switcher is unkown to me at present but can be had from your local CCTV dealer.
In this case, no recording arrangement has been done.
b) a PC - Buy a 4 channel USB DVR card, somewhat like -
eBay.com.hk : 4CH USB DVR Video Capture Record Card 4 CCTV Camera NEW (item 400000791508 end time Sep-25-09 05:18:27)
I bought this card from another international website for 1000/- (incl. of shipping to india)
It has 4 video input, 1 audio input and a recording software.
You may now connect 4 of your cameras to this card and watch/record/schedule record from the 4 connected cameras to your PC. Wanna connect another 4 camera, get one card more and connect to the other USB port of the PC and go on.
I am still looking for more than 4 channel dvr card as such to work out some low cost model.
This may save you 25k+ on your entire setup microsoft as compared to your dealer.