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If you're like me and you don't mind spending a little more to get a good turnkey system, you might consider CCTV Camera Pros. You can also build your own system with their help, depending upon your needs.

Nice. Opportunists roaming the neighborhood looking for easy pickins. Grrrrr....

Wireless webcams have improved dramatically. They can now alert you through email, IM, phone or smartphone.

They use WAP2 Enterprise security, so hacking them is non-trivial. Many of the new ones also upload their data to the cloud, so you don't even need local storage and don't have to worry about your DVD being stolen.

Their main weakness is that they need a power source, so you need to mount them somewhere that only a well prepared burglar could get to. If you're worried about the power line being cut you need to use conduit to protect the wiring. If the bad guy can cut the power cord, the camera just became a boat anchor.

They have infrared for night vision, motion detection to set off an alarm, pan and tilt and high resolution. All of this comes at a cost, of course, but a good Foscam outdoor wireless IP IR pan tilt high resolution camera will cost you less than $200. You can set the whole thing up yourself and store the data in the cloud. It's the ultimate in home security for an affordable price. You can view on the web, on your smartphone or through an app that collates all of your cameras. Some cameras use Power over Ethernet, but wiring all that up is a chore and you have to know what you're doing.

You can buy wireless webcams for about $30-$60 each, so four wouldn't cost you more than $250. You view them on your computer, and you can set it up so you can watch them at work. You can buy wireless webcams with "IR night vision" for $80 at Best Buy, so four would cost you $320. You can buy wireless night vision webcams with motion detection for less than $50 on eBay - http://www.ebay.com/bhp/wireless-wifi-i ... era-webcam" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - 4 cameras would cost you $200.

You need to read up on it - install software on your computer (which you can download for free) and tie it all together so that you can view it. If you know what you're doing, you can even view it from work or on your PDA, setup email notifications, etc.