panasonic has a nice wireless camera setup and a website that allows you access to your home/garage from any pc.
I don't have a recommendation, but I can tell you my feedback on camera systems. I bought a panasonic system with the 3 PTZ cams and a server, and returned it after messing with it for a few days. Cool features, but it had too many problems plus, in hindsight, it wasn't good enough. I'm slowly building a video recorder system for my house, and working out the bugs one at a time. It's very frustrating. I bought one of those 4-camera DVR systems from Costco. It's pretty cool being able to see what went on around the house while I was at work. I've seen a felony committed in front of my house, as well as a few taggings. Chased down a tagger one night and yelled at him, haven't seen him around here since. I know whose dog craps in my yard. I leave it on a screen in front of me as I surf the web, and I always know who's on the sidewalk or at the front door. That said, there are a LOT of problems.
Forget what you see in the movies, it's a bunch of hogwash. The cameras have crappy res, and the recorder downgrades it with its own crappy res. A car would have to be on my front lawn before I could read its license plate. All the cheap cameras have fixed-focus. You have to set them to a certain distance, and they're only optimal for things at that distance. Color cams don't work at night or have great resolution. Night vision cams are sharper, but grainier, and the black and white colors are harder to detect by the recorder's motion sensor.
The DVRs suck. All affordable ones--Q-See, Astak, Lorex, Clover, Swann, etc--are made in China and they all have problems. Features that don't work, manuals that are unreadable, TERRIBLE customer service, etc. The DVR is motion activated, which means it is only supposed to record when tripped by motion. At night my recorder goes off randomly, and misses actual motion. I've read it's a common problem across all the cheap brands. You can record 24/7, but going through the video then becomes unmanageable.
So now I'm working to upgrade the system little by little. I started with the cameras, bought 2 so far. One of them is an outdoor dome camera with pan/tilt/zoom. Talk about cool! I can read street signs 3 blocks away. The other is a hi-res camera, 540TVL. I've plugged it in and tested it, but haven't installed it yet. Next on my list is a much better recorder.
Video security systems are a very all-or-nothing thing. You either get a really cheap system that's cool and fun, but which will not add any real security to your life, or you go all out and spend $6-10k, which is the path I'm on, and even then you'll have some bugs to work out, and a lot of loopholes to patch. I mentioned the pan/tilt/zoom cam, and it's really cool, but not for an absentee video security system. I have to leave it trained in one spot while I'm away, so it's no better than a good fixed camera. You can program a "route", but then you lose your motion-activated selectiveness.
I've installed 4 motion-activated security lights to supplement my system, because the lights going on at night trigger the motion sensors in the recorder. I have tested the video surveillance over the web, and it works, but not for my needs--my workplace has a firewall
. The recorder needs to be able to access the internet, most importantly so it can store images on a dedicated site you own. Otherwise anyone who breaks into your home will destroy or steal the recorder, along with all your stuff (recorders have noisy fans that are noticeable). And even then, with all the images stored away online, they may not help you at all. What good is a picture of a burglar if no one recognizes him?
