u/Zestyclose_Jacket924

TL;DR: If you're considering a Reolink OMVI 3i with Blue Iris LE, be aware that you'll need the full Blue Iris license to view and record both lenses.

First, the good: I'm genuinely impressed with Blue Iris. I repurposed an old i7-7700K into an NVR, added an 8 TB WD Purple Pro, enabled Intel+VPP, and everything has been running exceptionally well.

Where I got caught was licensing.

I purchased the Blue Iris LE license because I own one Reolink OMVI 3i. What I learned is that the OMVI 3i exposes two independent RTSP streams (one panoramic and one PTZ). Blue Iris treats those as two separate camera objects, even though they're housed in a single physical camera with one IP address.

To verify this, Blue Iris support suggested testing the RTSP streams directly in VLC. Both streams worked perfectly, confirming the camera was functioning correctly. The limitation turned out to be licensing, not configuration.

By comparison, the Reolink app (Windows and iOS) displays both lenses simultaneously because it understands they're part of the same physical device.

I'm not saying Blue Iris is wrong, technically, each independently recordable stream is a separate camera object. I just expected a single physical camera license to include all streams provided by that device.

Hopefully this saves someone else a little time if they're planning an OMVI 3i deployment.

I live in southwest Florida. My current provider is Xfinity running 2000/350. Surprisingly, I give it a 99.99% uptime and high SLA since moving in 5 years ago; however, I noticed T-Mobile Fiber (TFiber) running through our main thoroughfare about 3 weeks ago. I think the contractor is Tillman Fiber.

I was curious and my address qualified for 2000/2000 tier. Cool! I pre-ordered and expected to wait up to a year or more. No biggie, I'm not in a hurry.

FFW to 3 weeks after pre-order: they're running the microduct underground to my friggin house!! It's about a 1/8-1/4 mile run. Wha...t??!

I'm old school network guy. I remember "pre-order-->1 year or more deployment" and scheduling hell. Not this. I saw the deployment, saw who was rolling, pre-ordered and (probably) full 2k/2k to the house within a month. The even asked me this morning where I wanted the demarc on my house? ONT inside or out? (I picked inside next to my comms rack)

Saying all that: I've read the complaints. I've seen North Carolina get absolutely wrecked, so ... I'm going to be running both services in parallel. Xfinity and TFiber. New rollouts usually are still cleaning up bugs or connectivity/power issues, so we'll see.

Thank you all for your honest opinions. I've got a lot to look out for and if it doesn't work out, well, y'all warned me for sure.