Just updated to V8.14.0. The NVR is seen with the attached cameras but I cannot control the NVR or the cameras. I cannot live stream or playback from any camera. Running Win11 Pro 64bit.

I'll do that.

I have 6 cameras connected to my Reolink RLN8-410 NVR. 5 are RLC-410-5MP and one is a RLC-511. It seems that the RLC-511 is the only one for which I can set the motion detection areas using this beta client. Selecting that option on any of the others displays what looks like the top black window frame and nothing else.

Also - a suggestion. The client takes a bit of time to start - perhaps a splash screen would at least let the user know that it's starting.

I have other sensors around my house that log motion events. My RLN8-410-E NVR does not seem to have a way to sync its time with a network time server. That capability would seem to be expected in a security system. Is there a way to do that on Reolink NVR's? Am I missing something? I'm guessing that the NVR OS is some flavor of linux. If root access was allowed this would probably be easy for me to accomplish on my own.

I have the RLN8-410-E.

After reading a few more posts in this thread I again tried my Microsoft Arc mouse but this time in the front USB port. It actually works!

I hope Reolink monitors this forum and will give a definitive answer about whether or not the HDD will spin down if not being accessed. I would be surprised if that were true. I saw another post here about the apparent inability to access a camera's SD card if the camera is attached to an NVR. I have 5 cameras in which I had installed 64Gb SD cards. I later connected them to an NVR. I'm actually hoping that the SD card is not written to at all once the camera is connected to the NVR. It would be a waste of the SD card's useful life. So far I haven't gone to the trouble of climbing up to my cameras and unmounting them to get access to the SD cards and removing them.
You can actually search for motion events on individual cameras using the NVR monitor - but it's pretty tedious. You can also search for events by connecting to the NVR using your computer and browser. I haven't really done any of that nor have I experimented much with motion sensitivity and masking settings in an attempt to make motion events more definitive. But it is something I will be investigating.

The leftmost column of the IPC channel display is just a number. But as far as I can tell it has no purpose - and in fact it can be confusing/misleading. That number is unrelated to the numbering of the POE connections in the back. The channel column allows the user to select a channel for each row. I'm curious about this as well and I'd like to know the point of being able to do this. I must be missing something about the design of this UI.

I tried a Microsoft Arc Mouse - it too fails to work.

Just an opinion here but I believe an SD card has a limited number of write cycles whereas the HDD may not work forever it will surely outlive an SD card when considering write operations. Also, the HDD is spinning all the time anyway so not recording 24/7 will not extend its life significantly IMO. The major consideration with regard to recording 24/7 is how many total hours of recording will you have based on the capacity of your HDD.