- Apple has its own security monitoring service
called HomeKit Secure Video.
But what features does it offer and is it right for you?
And that is what we're gonna be taking a look at
in today's video, so stay tuned.
(dubstep music)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another video.
My name is Steve from the YouTube channel Steve Does
and I wanna thank you for joining me here at Reviews.org.
So what is the difference
between something that works with HomeKit
and something that is enabled with HomeKit Secure Video?
Well, a camera that works with HomeKit
is a camera that you can add to your Home app.
It's gonna allow you to view live feed,
set up different automations,
but you're not gonna be able to record or view any video
within the Home app.
What HomeKit Secure Video is going to allow you to do,
now keep in mind,
the camera does have to have that feature available to it.
But what that's gonna do
is that it's going to allow the camera
to send footage to your HomeKit hub.
From there, that footage is going to be processed,
encrypted, and then uploaded to the cloud
for you to view later.
Now, what is the benefit to this?
With other security cameras,
what it does is then it's gonna take that footage live
and then it is going to send it up to the cloud
to be processed, determining if there was a person,
a package, a vehicle or say maybe an animal in the shot,
it's gonna process it up on the cloud
and it's gonna send the notifications back down to you
while saving it up to the cloud.
And the problem with that is, if your internet is slow,
you may not get the best quality of footage.
Also, your notifications are gonna take longer.
With Secure Video,
it is going to process everything locally in your house,
on your HomeKit hub.
Once it's been processed locally,
it'll then encrypt it and send it up to the cloud.
That way it is encrypted in the cloud,
nobody can look at it except for you.
This is gonna be ideal
if you are protective of your privacy.
So what are the requirements for getting this set up?
First off, you are going to need a HomeKit hub.
Now that's gonna be something like an Apple TV.
You can use a HomePod, a HomePod Mini, an iPad,
something that is going to process all of this information.
Once you have that set up
and a camera that supports HomeKit Secure Video,
you're also gonna need an iCloud plan.
So there are three plans to choose from,
this is gonna be for iCloud Plus.
You can either get to the 99 cents a month,
where it's just gonna be 50 gigs
and it's gonna cover one camera.
You can do $2.99 a month, that is gonna be a 200 gig plan.
It's gonna cover five cameras.
And then there is the $10 a month,
which is gonna be two terabytes of storage,
and that is going to cover unlimited cameras.
Now, the cool thing about this is that,
any of the storage that you use for your cameras
is not gonna go against these data plans.
So you're not gonna have to worry about losing out
on that 200 gigs of storage,
to all of the security videos that you do,
it is not going to count against that.
So you can still use that 200 gigs for uploading photos
or videos that you've taken on your phone
or any other data that you wanna do.
Which is a great feature right there.
Okay, now that we have talked about what HomeKit is
and what the requirements are,
let's go ahead and take a look at the app
and see some of the features that are actually here.
But before we get started with that,
don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell.
So you don't miss out on future videos like this one.
And with that said, let's dive into the app.
Okay, so I have my Home app loaded up right here.
I'm gonna scroll all the way down to the bottom,
to the two cameras that I have.
I've got one camera outside and I've got a video doorbell.
If we take a look at the camera that is outside,
I currently don't have that one set up with Secure Video.
So if I tap on that camera to bring up a live view,
you notice, all I really see is a live view.
There's nothing on the bottom for me to look at footage
or anything like that.
This is a camera
that does not have HomeKit Secure Video enabled.
But if I back out of here
and we go ahead and click on the doorbell,
this does have Secure Video enabled.
So what you see at the bottom here are recorded clips.
Now the cool thing about this is you can go back
and check out anything that has been happening
at the front door.
So here's one of somebody leaving.
It's gonna have a little icon next to it, too.
So you can see down here a little person icon,
that means a person was detected.
Now I don't have anything going up to my front door
as far as cars, so you're not going to see any cars
or anything like that.
But you can scroll through all the footage
that you have right here.
What I love about this one being wired, too
is it's going to give you the recording
before the action actually happened.
So if you notice right here, it's playing a video,
but you're not seeing any action yet.
So you're gonna be able to see
something that's walking up to the door,
instead of some issues that you know, Ring had had
where it wouldn't start recording
until the person was already at the door.
So that is something that I like about this right here.
Up at the very top,
you can scroll through the different days.
Now with this, you're only gonna get 10 days
of recording up here.
But you can jump through the different days right there.
You can also hit on this up arrow,
down in the bottom left corner
and share this video with somebody.
So you see there, I hit the up arrow
and it's going to allow me to select the clip.
Now I can pinch and zoom in on the clip, if I wanna do that,
to get a closer view down there.
So you can zoom on the clip,
you can also pinch to zoom out, if you wanna do that.
You're gonna click on the next button
and that is going to allow you to email, text it,
whatever you want to do for sending out that clip.
Now, if I back out of there,
let's go ahead and cancel that sharing.
I'm gonna go ahead and click on the gear icon
up at the top of the page right here.
And we're gonna take a look
at some of the settings from here.
So, like with normally setting up a camera,
we've got different accessories.
These are going to be ways for you to automate.
So on the video doorbell, I've got one for a light sensor
and I've also got one for a motion sensor.
Depending on the camera that you have,
you may have different options here.
Backing out of there,
we can also set up different notifications.
So we've got, allow snapshots in your notifications,
status change notifications,
notify when the camera goes offline.
And then we've got options down here
for notifying on this iPhone,
so I turned it off right there, turning it back on.
You can set up your different notifications
for certain times of the day, if you wanna do that.
I'm gonna leave it for any time right here, close that
and then I can also have it for, say, different people.
So when I'm home, when I'm not home,
and that is going to use the geo-fencing from this phone
to let you know if you are home or not home.
We've also got doorbell notifications,
that's gonna be specific to a doorbell,
activity notifications.
So those are the different notifications
you're gonna be able to get through here.
We've got things like door chimes,
'cause this is the doorbell.
Now here are our recording options.
So you've got options for something when you are home
and when you're not home.
So you can either turn off your recording,
you can have it detect activity,
you can stream, or you can stream and allow recording.
So make sure that you go ahead
and make the change in here to allow recording.
So that way it is gonna be recording up to your iCloud
and processing on your local hub.
We can also set up different activity zones.
So right here, I can set up an activity zone that says,
I want somebody who is going to be walking
in this area right here.
I can move it around if I want it,
I'm gonna tap to select
and we can move this in different locations
to get the angle that we want
for somebody walking up to my front door
and we click done on that.
We've got camera status lights, night vision lights.
These are all things that are going to be specific
to your camera.
Now, if we take a look right in the center here,
we also have the ability for face recognition.
So you can turn on face recognition
where it is going to recognize faces
that are in your photo library, if you wanna set that up.
And when somebody approaches the door that it recognizes,
you can get a custom notification,
letting you know who that person is.
Now, I don't have mine turned on right now,
but that is just a feature that I wanted to bring up
and show you.
Alright, now that we've gone over the app,
I wanna talk about some of the features
that the Secure Video is missing
that other camera systems are gonna provide for you.
The first one is going to be, there is no 24/7 recording.
So with cameras like Nest and Arlo,
you can actually purchase plans
that are gonna be able to do 24/7 recording.
So, the problem with Secure Video is that it is event based.
If for some reason the event did not get triggered,
it will not record.
If you do have 24/7 recording set up, it's always recording
and you can always go back to a certain time
or a certain day and check that recording,
even if it didn't get triggered by motion,
Say it may be too far away or something happened.
Having 24/7 recording is just a great feature to have
and that is something that is missing from this.
In addition to that, the clips are limited to 1080p.
So even if you have a 2K or a 4k camera,
the clips that are gonna be recorded and sent to the cloud
are strictly going to be 1080p.
This is really going to matter
if you want to get a closeup or zoom in on a license plate.
Other than that, I mean, 1080p is going to be fine,
It's really going to affect you if you want to zoom in
and either get some clarity on a face or a license plate.
So that's kind of a bummer right there.
Next up is that there are only 10 days
of event based recording.
If you go with some of these other companies out there,
you're gonna get 30 days of event based recording,
even up to 60 days of event based recording.
So you can always go back later
and take a look at something that you might've missed
or found out about.
Now with the 10 days that you're getting on this one,
and like with every service plan,
you can always go and download the clips.
So you can download it to your phone and save it there.
So you don't have to worry about that.
But if you do need to go farther back than 10 days,
you're not gonna be able to do that with Secure Video.
Now, the last thing that I wanted to bring up
that is missing from Secure Video
is that there is no web portal.
So you have to use your phone to go in and view the clips.
With other services, like Ring, Eufy, Arlo,
you can actually log into a website
and view your information there.
So either you don't need an iPhone or an iPad
to log in and view the clips,
but say you have somebody in your house
that doesn't have one of those devices.
They're not an Apple user,
but they still wanna be able to check footage,
they're not gonna be able to do that
through an optional web portal.
Alright, so is Apple Secure Video worth it?
I mean, it's just gonna depend on what you need it for.
We talked about some of the things that it is lacking.
We don't have 24/7 recording, if we need that.
It does have 10 days of history
and it can only upload at 1080p.
If you need any of those things right there,
this is not going to be worth it for you.
But if those are things that don't matter to you,
the subscription fees are well worth it.
Especially if you are an Apple user.
If you're gonna pay $10 a month,
which is what it would cost if you were to do Ring,
I believe even Arlo.
Nest is gonna be a little bit more expensive a month,
to get their subscription services.
They're gonna cover anywhere from 10
to unlimited amount of cameras,
then it is well worth it because I'm thinking right here,
I'm an iPhone user, say I pay $10 a month.
It's gonna get me two terabytes of storage
for me to back up my phone, my pictures,
my videos that I'm taking on my phone
and then as a bonus, I'm getting unlimited recordings
on the cameras that I have around the house.
For me personally, I think that is a great deal right there.
I would rather pay the $10 a month
to not only get unlimited recording
on my cameras around the house,
but to have the peace of mind of having my phone backed up
and all of that extra cloud storage.
Otherwise I'm paying Ring, Arlo, Nest
basically the same price, if not a little bit more,
and I'm not getting any of those extra phone benefits
out of it, too, so, for me, it's a no brainer
and another thing that I like about it too,
is that if you have different cameras,
so let's say I've got an Arlo, a Eufy,
and then I picked up a Logitech camera.
I can put all of those under one bundle
and check it in the one app, the Home app,
instead of having to go into each of their individual apps,
I get one location there, so,
I love that benefit right there, I think it is well worth it
if you have the right cameras though.
So that is one thing that you have to make sure
that when you are looking for a camera,
that it does say that it supports
Apple's HomeKit Secure Video.
Well, that is pretty much the breakdown
of what this service is and what it offers.
If this video is helpful, give it a thumbs up.
Let me know that you liked it.
You guys wanna know anything more about HomeKits
or what they offer, check out the link below to Reviews.org.
I'll see you guys in the next video.