Why do cameras appear poorer quality than they actually are
Please ensure the recorder is recording at the native resolutions defined in the camera's firmware. If you export the video and play it back on a higher resolution monitor, the image will appear as expected with more detail and clarity.
Issue
You may notice artifacts or "Jaggies" when the high video stream is displayed from 4k cameras on a monitor attached to the recorder or workstation if the resolution is below 1080p (1920x1080 pixels).
Causes of Artifacting
These artifacts occur due to the down scaling of the original video stream from the camera. The 4k camera has a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. If the monitor resolution is 1360x768 pixels, it contains about 1/3 of the pixels that make up the camera's resolution.
The grid square in which the video is displayed in the Live view is has a much lower pixel count. Typically, the grid view in Live will be displaying a lower resolution stream to accommodate having so many camera streams in one view. In most browsers, during the video encoding process, the image is downscale. This means the video card discards some data from the video stream to display the image within the viewing constraints of the user interface of the thin client or NVR software defined by the browser.
Note: It's important to remember that this does not impact the quality of the recorded video. The system will still be recording according to the defined display constraints.