Wireless Network Camera 802.11g, MPEG4, Automatic Network Configuration, Universal Plug and Play, Set-up Wizard, Remote Pan/Tilt Control, Built in PIR motion detector

User Reviews about Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11

Already many reviews which I try to not repeat here. I do like this camera and find several pros and cons which I have not seen documented and list below:

Pros:
1) Based on my calls, Panasonic offers great technical support. Perhaps those who where not happy with support should have hung up and called back.
2) All home monitoring camera's perform poorly in low light conditions regardless of the brand. Bottom line: No light, no picture. Some do better than others obviously in lower light conditions, but there is a general threshold in the evening where you must turn on the lights for the camera to operate.
3) I have found no problem logging into and using the panasonic site (viewnetcam). It has worked seamlessly for me and provides password security which has been just fine.
4) The camera does have 10x digital zoom capability - use the scroll capability on your mouse if available. Needed to do a web search to understand how to use this feature.

Cons:
1) There is NO ability to attach an external speaker, nor is there a speaker integrated with the camera. When we were on vacation, our cat would come to the camera for the first week when we connected - must have been some mechanical noise the cat picked up. However, the second week and onward, our cat didn't appear. Had we been able to call out via a speaker, she would have appeared. Our next home camera will have both Mic and speaker capability.
2) Documentation is a bit lacking. Web searches may be your best approach to capture general guidance on using the camera. -- Nice Quality - great support

If you buy a used or refurbished camera chances are it has been registered by a previous owner with view net cam . com
This means you will have to call Panasonic with a bunch of information after you get the camera working on LAN to issue a request to view net cam . com to unregister the camera otherwise you can't use the camera via the Internet. And here's the real crappy part...

It can take up to 5 days to get the cameras account cleared because Panasonic has to notify a company in China. Had I known this I wouldn't have bought a refurbished camera. I now also see that a new BL-C131A camera can cost around $400 on Amazon. I just saw these same cameras at Best Buy for $239 the other day. Maybe I should save myself the trouble and buy from a local store so that if there's a problem I can return it immediately and get my money back without having to deal with shipping returns and companies like "Good As New Electronics" who want a 15% restocking fee for the return of defective products.

Can't say how the camera preforms through the Internet because I'm stuck waiting for the old account to be reset.
I spent over 8 hours trying to make this work before finding out this problem, so I'm rather pissed about it.

Panasonic needs to be able to expedite this account clearing issue. I bought the camera because of it's good reviews, but I didn't see this issue and I hope it helps someone else to know before hand and maybe save you some time and frustration.

UPDATE 08-04-2010:
I returned the camera because it started producing a blurry image after three days. Panasonic said it was a defective camera. I bought this camera from "Good As New Electronics" and they won't give a refund without charging me a 15% restocking fee. They only offered an exchange, so I excepted another refurbished camera. After waiting more than a week I received the replacement camera and guess what? Another preregistered camera, so I had to start the whole process over to have the account cleared before I can use the camera on the Internet. A month has now past since the first camera. I'm still waiting...

Update: 08-09-2010:
Still waiting for the camera to be cleared from the view cam net . com website. The 5 days have come and gone. I called Panasonic and they said give it another day...

Update: 08-10-2010:
Old account still not cleared, so I called Panasonic again this morning. After more questioning about the cameras serial number and other information the guy on the phone said the request was just send yesterday for processing, and I replied what?! Well again the incompetent jerks dropped the ball. Even though I called it in 6 days ago with the promise that it would be fixed in 3 to 5 days the process only started just yesterday. I've had enough. I told the rep skip it the cameras going back to the seller "Good As New Electronics". Kind of a oxymoron isn't it?

This camera (BL-C131A) got 4 stars and was highly rated so I'm a little perplexed. I started to look more at the reviews with 1 and 2 stars and that revealed some important issues. Even if I finally got the Internet portion of the camera working I'd still be concerned if the camera would last. I read a lot about the camera working fine and than suddenly not working anymore. Sometimes this happens within 3 months and sometimes after a year. The first one I bought crapped out after only three days. It seems to be hit and miss. My final word on this camera is don't buy a refurbish unless you don't care about the Internet viewing function, or don't mind waiting to get it released from a previous owner. -- Buyer Beware!

This was a "Good as New" Panasonic-refurbished camera from Amazon. The software CD was physically broken on arrival, and the manual it contained could not be downloaded from Panasonic, which resulted in more dollars spent. I spent about $10 of cell phone time waiting for support and bouncing around the Panasonic phone tree. Panasonic charged me $18+ to replace the CD.

My application is a webcam that sends still JPGs to my web site. I have had experience with several other wireless webcams. With pre-knowledge about this camera, I was able to get it working without the CD (but, I did want the manual). Be aware that the viewing angle is fairly wide, which for my application (view of mountains from window) was a disadvantage. The advertised 10x digital zoom is evidently unavailable for still JPGs.

Pros:
- A good choice of trigger features.
- Ability to FTP to a web site (without DNS redirection).
- The FTP options include files with same name (what I needed), or sequential file-names.
- It mostly can be operated from a browser on a Mac.
- Setup screens are intuitive and sensible.
- This camera can handle sun-light terrain (unlike a TrendNew webcam that I tried).
- So far, operation has been stable (unlike the Axis 207W which had a tendency to hang).

Cons:
- Image quality is not as good as my Axis 207W, which died. Seems to have something like a pin-hole instead of a real lens. (Due to its small aperture, its lack of focus capability is not so important.)
- The JPG image quality could be improved, if a person had more tweaking options.
- The advertised 10X digital zoom seems unavailable, at least for JPG stills.
-- OK, but Moderate Quality and Short on Image Tuning