Pros: Web interface: good. IP surveillance software: OK. Overall happy with this camera.
Cons: Hangs or very long pauses on motion detection. IP surveillance software could be more intuitive.
The bottom line: I like this camera and recommend it. The one major but intermittent bug I talked about will hopefully be addressed by Dlink
First let me give a brief (er... not so brief) overview and then I will give my thoughts on the camera itself.

DLink, who is the manufacturer of this camera, has made a line of wired and wireless cameras that connect directly to your network. They can be configured and viewed by a web browser running either on your internal network or over the internet as long as you have the appropriate TCP/udp ports open on your router (the ports are completely configurable). Because these cameras hook up on your network, no computer needs to be constantly running to access then remotely (accept the remote computer you are using). This makes it very different than just a web camera.

The DCS-5300W is at the moment the "high-end" of this camera line up. First, it allows pan and tilt features that you can control from either a web browser or from an application DLInk calls "IP surveillance". You can pan from left to right at approx 270 degrees. The tilt can go from 90 degrees up to about 35 degrees down.

You can set up motion detection "windows" on your screen so that if a certain area (up to 3) has motion the camera can email you with a before, during, and after event images. If can also FTP the pictures up to an FTP server.

DLink's IP surveillance software is optional. You do not technically have to use it because you can do much through the web browser. However the software allows you to save video onto your disk. Disk space can be conserved with a recycle mode that will not write out more than the size allocated for the movie file (proprietary format) so you can set it up so it does not eat up all your free disk drive space. You can schedule times when movies are made or have it only make a movie when motion is detected. There is a pretty neat graph that shows when motion is detected (it is a red bar) and clicking it will select video of the event taking place.

The software also allows you to control multiple cameras at the same time and record (scheduled of even driven) from all of them. Nice feature but so far I only have one DCS-5300W.

One last note on features, this camera has audio capabilities also so u can hear what is going on. You can turn off the audio to save bandwidth if you like (for if you are remotely accessing the camera from outside your network). Another feature is an infrared remote control that allows you to tilt and pan and auto patrol (go to various spots you have set up, also in the web browser).

Ok, now for the review part. The camera seems to be physically well built. SO far I have had no problems with that. The web browser interface and features are well done and I have no complaint there. However... I have had problems when the camera just HANGS. This almost always happens when I am enabling motion detection and after turning it on I wave my hand in front of the camera. Sometimes the video just pauses and I can restart the browser but other times the camera just plain dies. Can't ping it or anything. This is NOT good. If I am quite a distance from home and the camera hangs... I better have a way to remotely turn it off and on again like an X10 switch or something. Because of this I don't normally use the motion detection feature.

I would like to use the motion detection feature but there are some other problems with that too. First, if I pan or tilt motion is detected. I could live with this except everytime you access the camera via a web browser it automatically centers itself. So... unless you have it already centered it will detect motion. This might sound like I am being a baby here and maybe I am... but it would be nice if it turned off motion detection "briefly" while I tilt and pan. That way I can access the camera remotely... look around make sure all is well with my house... and then re-point it back to where it was (like looking at my computer equipment) and let it start detecting motion again. Besides these problems accessing the camera via a web browser is not a problem and I like how it works.

If you decide to use the IP surveillance software I highly recommend you read the manual. Not that it is difficult but it is at first a little unintuiive so take a little time just to understand how to record and playback the video.

One problem I found with the IP surveillance software is I can hang the software too but lo and behold... it has to do when I set up motion detection.

RULE OF THUMB for enabling motion detection either Via web or the software: It would seem when it works on the first try.... it works well for long periods after that. So if you have to set up motion detection either via the web browser of using the software... test it after enabling it.

One last note... I have DCS1000W and DCS-900W cameras at home and they use a different software called "IP view". IP View will NOT work with the DCS-5300W camera and the IP surveillance software will NOT work with the DCS1000W and DCS-900W cameras. This is what I get for not reading the FAQ's in a more detailed manner.