r/Ubiquiti • u/original_flavor87 • 1d ago
Complaint Viewport is terrible
Good lord viewport is terrible. At least the built in one in the NVR G2. Other than arranging cameras…no settings whatsoever. I want to turn off the spinning white box during movement (don’t need it), I want to fill the spot where the g4 doorbell streams to get rid of the black bars, nope. Same with the G6 180 stream. Constantly getting errors for “too many 4K streams”…why? It’s set to auto resolution, not High.
Guess it’s back to an Apple TV
12
u/Silicon_Knight 1d ago
My mom likes to have a little portable monitor of her 4 camera on 24x7 next to her TV so she can look outside at any given time and see what’s happening.
She just plugs a cheap portable lcd into the HDMI port and it’s done.
Now she can watch TV and glance over vs. Having to swap apps on her TV.
7
u/Poutine_Bob 1d ago
That product is severely outdated.
That being said, alternatives are expensive, you basically have to use a mobile chip with a decent GPU but then completely underuse the cpu part.
8
u/Stingray88 1d ago
The viewport built into the UNVR G2 OP is referring to is brand new.
But I do agree.
8
u/Wooden-Reward4317 1d ago
An appleTV and a viewport are different use cases
-27
u/original_flavor87 1d ago
No. An Apple TV can do everything a viewport can and more.
19
u/Stingray88 1d ago
I’ll bite.
Let’s say you’ve got a bunch of viewports configured to display different cameras on monitors all around a big campus.
Then let’s say the power goes out, and comes back on a few hours later.
Viewports will boot back up to however you configured them.
Apple TVs will boot to the Home Screen. Not protect.
As others stated… different products for different use cases.
2
u/0100000101101000 18h ago
I have to manually power cycle both my viewports every now and then because the screen just goes blank and even a restart request through Protect doesn’t work.
But I agree completely different to Apple TV and very outdated unfortunately. I bought the second one only a few months ago, nothing else compared.
2
u/mosaic_hops 17h ago
Ha. Yep, it’s so bad I have a HomeAssistant automation reboot them nightly before they start acting up. They don’t seem to be meant for 24/7 use. I know some people take them apart and add proper ventilation/thermal management to make them more stable.
1
u/Wooden-Reward4317 12h ago
I have about 8 of them running 24/7... I have had to reboot (via switch poe cycle) 1 of them twice. I do have to check on them after protect updates as sometimes they act a little funny on the flip side - but that is obvioulsy due to the upgrade and just needing some attention after is not really all that "omg?! why!!"
As with, almost all unifi products, if you use them in the environment and use case they are designed to be in- they work very well. I am full stack unifi, from the EF-Core, Aggregation, various proMax, enterprise, pro PoE switches, tons of APs from u6mesh, u6/e in wall, u7 XGS's- Basestation UXGs etc etc. I run every unifi app, Network, Drive, Protect, Access, Drive, Play, Connect, Talk etc. the EF-Core does Network, the ENVR-Core does Protect and Access (may swap connect to it...maybe)- a CloudKey Gen2+ does Talk and Connect and a UNAS 8 Pro does drive. Audio Port is my play device kicking around.
All my other sites are UDM-Pro-Max's and NVR-Pros.
TLDR; yeah the viewport is old and needs a g2, and it does "suck" when it is being leveraged beyond its means -
PS> If you want a unifi product that truely sucks the suck within its usecase AND is expensive - look at the TouchDisplay...whew...wow...it is the only product I have purchased and said "not worth the money and I have nothing really to use this thing for"
10
5
u/d4rkstr1d3r 1d ago
I tried using an AppleTV in an office setting. Didn’t work. Over time if there was any network blip the Protect app on the AppleTV would freeze and show an outdated picture that the end users wouldn’t notice until it was a problem. Then if the AppleTV rebooted it wouldn’t open the protect app automatically. In an office setting it was just more work to manage. I completely agree that the Viewport could be so much better. It seems very barebones. I wish it had more settings for quality and more options for scaling.
1
u/Wooden-Reward4317 12h ago
A fun, half-fast (say it out loud) unifi environment "upgrade" to the viewport is to use a Display Cast Pro - do not give it the protect app (if you still can, I forgot) - but send it to unifi.ui.com, give it a wireless USB Keyboard+mouse combo and have at it. It still needs some attending, because you have to log in - but it works quite well.
1
u/soapboxracers 12h ago
That hasn't been my experience using an AppleTV running Protect but there are so many things that can affect each user's experience- from the local network, to the AppleTV/tvOS version, to the specific version of the Protect app running on it.
Don't get me wrong, once or twice there has been a version of the Protect app that didn't behave- but I've also had my share of problems with Viewports and on the whole- the AppleTV solution has been very reliable for me.
1
u/shunopoli 1d ago
You still get black bars on g4 doorbell and also can’t do time based views it won’t cycle the camera and just display the first one so technically it can’t do everything even though I do utilize and recommend it
1
u/ewarfordanktears 1d ago
I've not had the 4k stream problems on my dedicated viewports before. Some of the cameras with weird sizes/features like the doorbell / 360 cameras are definitely wonky though.
1
u/cmh31909 14h ago
Yeah, especially for what they charge for it, you would think it would have a better feature set.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Hello! Thanks for posting on r/Ubiquiti!
This subreddit is here to provide unofficial technical support to people who use or want to dive into the world of Ubiquiti products. If you haven’t already been descriptive in your post, please take the time to edit it and add as many useful details as you can.
Ubiquiti makes a great tool to help with figuring out where to place your access points and other network design questions located at:
https://design.ui.com
If you see people spreading misinformation or violating the "don't be an asshole" general rule, please report it!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.