Why can't you support individual users about IP camera compatibility issues?

Many users like to drop a line of message to us, like this:

If you don't know what this website really is, this article will give an idea. We have a whole different topic to teach you how to add various cameras to Genius Vision NVR using Community Platform. Here, we focus on explaining that "we are not able" to respond to this kind of support-call messages that surround "IP camera compatibility issues".

IP camera compatibility issue involves testing with various hardware of different camera models. As one might understand that there are too many brands of IP camera existing in the world, and it is obviously not possible to ask Genius Vision, who is a single software developer, to perform exhaustive testing to all these camera models. Considering all these brands we listed in the Community Platform, it's inconceivable to make all the testing done physically in a normal-sized lab. Please just put up a little imagination and you will understand our point, that there are currently more than 8,000 models listed in the platform.

The practical way to resolve any IP camera compatibility issue, is to have the camera vendor's technical department to contact us. Why? Firstly, because they can easily download our trial software, freely, and setup inside their lab to conduct test.By contrast, it is highly unlikely Genius Vision will be able to obtain their testing cameras for free. Secondly, if they find any problems, they can contact Genius Vision engineer and speak in the engineer's language. Too many times, individual users try to contact us without even understanding some basic technical terms, such as TCP, UDP, RTSP, ONVIF, HTTP, URL, packet buffer size, codec, and etc. These are really technical terms and are not generally well-understood by average users. However in order to resolve the compatibility issues, talking in engineer's language is necessary.

Through the years of experiences dealing with end-users around IP camera issues who didn't have required technical background, we concluded such discussion is simply counter-productive and non-cohesive. In other words, it's a waste of time for both us and the user. There is almost nothing that we can achieve, unless we talk directly to the camera engineer. It's note-worthy here that many cheap cameras come from China, who are mostly only "factories" instead of "R&D companies". They did not even design the firmware by themselves, but merely copied, outsourced, or borrowed the firmware from other vendors and put a outercase to the camera with their logos. The reason is because R&D is also very expensive in China. For those vendors, they don't even have a "firmware engineer" that is available for such technical discussion.

Finally, a very important point about "any kind" of technical support, goes like this:

Many (in fact, most) of Genius Vision software users did not pay for the commercial software license. They pay another vendor for the camera, but instead ask Genius Vision to perform the first-line technical support. First-line technical support means "the support line that deals directly with end-users", and is often considered the "most burdened task".

This does not sound very fair to Genius Vision, isn't?

So, the conclusion is: