These are the questions Ulster hosts, owner-occupiers, landlords and venue owners bring us about Super Live Plus. They are grouped by the decision behind them — what the recorder may see, who it alerts, what it proves and how it survives the people passing through the house — and answered for the towns, rules and houses found here.
Making a TVT Recorder Fit the Booking Platforms
Our Woodstock cottage had a camera over the kitchen island before Airbnb’s 2024 ban — is unplugging it enough, or does it have to come out of Super Live Plus and the recorder too?
Unplugging is not enough. Airbnb’s announcement says indoor security cameras are not allowed inside listings regardless of location, purpose or prior disclosure, and rental-industry guides read the rule as covering a camera that is merely switched off: a guest who sees a lens on the wall has no way of knowing it is dead. The camera itself should come down. If it was cabled, the run should be terminated in the recorder closet or pulled, and the wall plate patched so nothing that looks like a camera mount remains in the room.
Then deal with the recorder and the app. On a TVT-platform recorder the channel can be deleted or disabled so it no longer appears in live view or records; once it is gone from the recorder, it disappears from Super Live Plus on every phone the next time the device list refreshes. If the house is also your own home for part of the year, decide now whether that camera ever goes back up — reinstalling it between bookings is exactly the kind of habit that leads to a forgotten camera during a stay. We write the change down with the date, which is useful if a guest or the platform ever asks.
The driveway camera at our Shandaken rental also catches the hot tub on the deck — what do we change on the recorder, and what do we tell guests?
You have three choices: move the camera so the tub falls out of frame, mask the tub inside the recorder, or keep the view and disclose it. Airbnb bars outdoor cameras from areas with a greater expectation of privacy and names examples such as an enclosed outdoor shower or sauna; Vrbo is more specific, saying that if an outdoor camera can see any part of a pool or hot tub, the host must state that in the listing and at a visible place at the property, such as a welcome binder or a sign near the area. Most Shandaken hosts would rather the camera simply not see the tub.
Moving the camera is the strongest fix, because nobody can undo a mounting angle from a phone. Where that is not practical, the TVT NVR manual describes privacy masks under Settings → Camera → Image → Mask Settings, with up to four areas per camera. A masked area is blanked in live view and recording. We draw the mask with a margin around the tub, then check it from Super Live Plus on a phone, because a mask drawn on the recorder’s monitor at one resolution can sit slightly differently on a sub-stream. Whatever you choose, the listing should describe the camera as it actually is.
A Vrbo guest complained that our porch camera looks through the living-room window — can a mask fix that without moving the camera?
Usually, yes. Vrbo’s policy says cameras must not be placed outside and used to capture the inside of the property, with a camera pointed through a window as its example. A mask over the window pane in that camera’s image removes the inside of the room from both live view and recording. The porch, the steps and the path to the door stay visible, which is what a host needs to see arrivals and deliveries.
Two cautions. First, glass reflects and night lighting changes what shows through it, so we check the mask in daylight and after dark with the interior lights on. Second, a guest who has already complained will judge by the camera, not the settings; if the lens still visibly faces the window, consider a small re-aim as well, and reply to the guest with what was changed. Keep the old disclosure wording in your records and update the listing so the description matches the new coverage.
Does a camera with a built-in microphone on the porch of a Saugerties rental break New York law if guests talk near it?
It can, if it records their conversation. New York’s eavesdropping law, Penal Law §250.05, makes it a felony to record a conversation without the consent of at least one party to it, and a host who is not in the conversation is not a party. Many outdoor cameras sold in kits have a microphone and record audio by default. On a rental, we switch audio off — on the camera and in the recorder’s recording settings — and confirm in Super Live Plus that playback is silent.
Two-way talk is a separate feature. Some hosts like being able to speak through a camera to a delivery driver or a lost guest. That is speaking, not recording, but it does mean the microphone is live while the session is open. If you keep two-way talk on a doorbell, say so in the house information, and do not use it on cameras near seating areas or hot tubs. Airbnb’s policy separately allows noise decibel monitors in common spaces precisely because they measure volume without recording sound — a different device from a camera with a microphone.
How should the Airbnb listing describe each camera so the words match what Super Live Plus actually records?
Write it from the channel list, not from memory. Open Super Live Plus, go through each live tile and describe it in plain terms: where the camera is mounted, what the frame covers, whether it records continuously or on motion, and whether audio is off. “Camera on the garage corner covering the driveway and parking area, video only” is the kind of line both platforms ask for; Vrbo says a photo of the camera in the listing does not count as disclosure.
The common mistake is a disclosure written when the system was installed and never revisited. A camera gets nudged by a ladder, a mask is lost in a firmware update, a new camera goes up on the shed. We leave each Ulster rental owner with a one-page table — channel number, name, location, coverage, audio, recording mode — plus a screenshot of each view as of the visit. When anything changes on the recorder, the table and the listing change the same day.
When the Owner Lives Under the Same Roof
Hurley lets us host only while we’re home — how do we keep the family’s indoor cameras from recording the guest side of the house?
Hurley’s law, as summarised in a 2026 review of Ulster town rules, allows short-term rentals only in the owner’s primary residence with the owner present for each stay. That puts your family’s own cameras — a baby monitor, a back-hall camera, a garage view — in the same building as paying guests. Airbnb’s ban on indoor cameras applies to the listing, and for a rented room inside your home the safe reading is that no indoor camera should be able to see any part of the guest’s space or the routes they use.
So the first step is a map: which rooms, stairs and halls guests use, and which stay private to the family. Indoor cameras that can see any guest area come down. Cameras that remain in genuinely private family rooms — a nursery the guests never enter, for example — should be on a separate recorder or on channels that the guest side can never be pointed at, and they should not be described as security cameras for the listing. Many owner-hosts find it simpler to keep indoor cameras off the TVT recorder entirely during the rental season and rely on outdoor views and a doorbell.
Can the recorder stop recording our hallway camera automatically on nights a room is booked, and pick it up again when we’re alone?
Technically a TVT recorder can record on a schedule, and push alerts can follow a schedule too — the NVR manual shows schedule settings under recording and under Event Notification → Push. But a schedule is the wrong tool for a camera that guests could see. A schedule does not move the lens, does not tell a guest the camera is off, and a booking that changes at the last minute will not change the schedule with it. Airbnb’s ban is about cameras inside the listing, not about when they record.
Where schedules do help is outdoors. A driveway camera can record continuously every day but only send alerts during the hours you are asleep; a gate camera at a farm stay can alert during the night and stay quiet while the farm is working. For a hallway inside a home you share with guests, we recommend removing the camera for the season rather than relying on timing.
In a New Paltz student house, can the landlord’s porch and driveway cameras stay in Super Live Plus without seeing into tenants’ rooms?
Yes, with the same discipline as a rental: outdoor views of the parking area, the porch and the trash area, masks over any window that the frame catches, and no audio. Student houses near the SUNY New Paltz campus — which enrolls more than 6,000 undergraduates — change tenants almost every year, so the system should be set up once in a way that does not depend on each year’s group agreeing. Unlawful surveillance under Penal Law §250.45 includes recording people without consent in bedrooms, bathrooms and similar rooms where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Shared living rooms and kitchens inside a student house are the tenants’ home. We do not install cameras there for a landlord. For the outdoor channels, a written note to tenants listing each camera and what it covers avoids disputes, and keeping the recorder in a locked space the landlord controls keeps tenants from unplugging the system after a noisy weekend.
Alerts for the People Who Have to Respond
Esopus expects a host within about fifteen driving miles of a non-owner-occupied rental — which camera events should ring that person’s phone at 1 a.m.?
Very few. The point of a nearby host is to respond to something real: a car that should not be there, a gate left open, a guest locked out. Every alert that is not one of those teaches the host to ignore the phone. On a TVT recorder the alert rules start with the motion areas you draw on each camera — the manual allows more than one area per camera — and the push setting, which can be tied to a schedule. We draw areas on the driveway entrance and the parking pad, leave out the road, the trees and the neighbour’s lights, and set night-only push for those channels.
Then we decide who gets what. The owner in the city may want every alert; the local host in Port Ewen or West Park wants only the driveway at night. Because alerts in Super Live Plus follow the phone and account that receives them, the local host’s phone should be set up with only the channels and alert types that matter to them, and tested with a real car pulling in before the visit ends.
Our Route 212 rental is booked for four guests — how would we know from the city that a dozen cars have turned up?
The cameras will not count cars for you on most budget recorders, but the motion area can be drawn so that only the parking pad triggers it, and the recording that follows gives you the count in a few seconds of playback. Headlights sweeping across a frame from the road are the classic false trigger on a Catskills driveway; the fix is a motion area that stops short of the road edge and, where the recorder offers it, raising sensitivity thresholds on that channel.
Some newer TVT-platform recorders and cameras offer vehicle or human detection as a separate event type; where yours does, use vehicle events on the parking channel rather than plain motion. Either way, the result should be one alert when cars arrive, which the host can open to see how many there are, rather than a stream of notifications through the evening.
Can an alert from the gate or porch camera tell our turnover cleaner that the guests have actually left?
It can tell her that a car left and the porch is quiet, which is usually what she needs to decide whether to drive over. The simplest version is a motion alert on the parking channel during checkout hours sent to a phone the cleaner uses for your property. The cleaner does not need to see live video of the house during a stay for this, and generally should not.
Clips That Hold Up After a Stay
Airbnb gives hosts 14 days after checkout to file a damage claim — how do we pull the arrival and departure clips before the recorder writes over them?
Airbnb’s help centre says a host files a reimbursement request in the Resolution Center within 14 days of the responsible guest’s checkout. Most budget recorders overwrite the oldest footage when the drive fills, and a small drive on a busy driveway may hold well under two weeks. So the clips should be saved the day you notice a problem, not when the claim is drafted.
In Super Live Plus, open playback for the parking or porch channel, pick the date, and record the relevant minutes on the phone; the manual describes playback by date with forward, rewind and single-frame controls. For a cleaner copy, export from the recorder to a USB stick by time range, which keeps the original resolution and the recorder’s time stamp. Check the recorder’s clock before you rely on the time — after a power cut it can drift — and save arrival and departure for the whole stay, not just the moment of damage.
What can outdoor footage actually prove in a damage dispute, and what can’t it?
It can show who arrived and when, how many people and vehicles came and went, what was carried in or out, and whether something visible outdoors — a railing, a grill, a fence — was damaged during the stay. It cannot show what happened inside, because there should be no indoor camera, and it cannot show anything hidden behind a mask. That is the trade the platforms have chosen, and it is why the rest of your evidence matters: dated photos of each room at check-in, receipts and the cleaner’s notes.
Footage helps most when it shows a timeline. A clip of eight people arriving for a four-guest booking, followed by a broken deck chair the next morning, says more than either alone. We set channels so the arrival point is clear and well lit at night, and we make sure the time stamp on the image is legible on a phone screen, because that is often where the clip will be watched.
A neighbour on our Olive road says a renter’s car clipped his mailbox — can we share that one clip without handing over our login?
Yes, and you should never hand over the login. Find the moment in playback, save a short clip to your phone or export it from the recorder, and send the file. The Super Live Plus manual describes a press-and-hold option that shares a device by QR code; that shares access to the recorder itself, which is far more than a neighbour needs and hard to take back. A clip is a file; a shared device is an open door.
Before you send it, watch the whole clip to be sure it shows only the road and your driveway, not your guests’ faces at the door or anything else you would not want shared. If the neighbour intends to report the damage to police, keep your original export untouched and send a copy. The recorder’s time stamp and a note of the channel and date make the clip easy for anyone else to rely on.
Keeping the System Out of Guests’ Hands
Guests use the same Wi-Fi as our recorder — could one of them find it on the network or open its login page?
On a flat home network, yes. Any device on the same network can usually see the recorder’s address, and the recorder’s web page or client port answers anyone who asks. The SuperLive Plus manual lists the recorder’s factory login as admin with the password 123456; a recorder that still has it is open to the first curious guest. TVT’s NVMS-9000 firmware before version 1.3.4 is also the subject of CVE-2024-14007, a flaw that can disclose administrator usernames and passwords to anyone who reaches its control port.
The fix is separation. Most current routers can run a guest network that cannot see the main one; the recorder and any owner devices stay on the main network, and guests get the guest network’s password. We also change the administrator password, retire old accounts, check the firmware version and remove forwarded ports the remote viewing no longer needs. With that done, a guest on the Wi-Fi sees the internet and nothing else.
A guest pressed the reset button on the router in our Phoenicia rental and the cameras vanished from the app — how do we make the system survive that?
A factory-reset router forgets everything: guest network, reserved addresses, any port forwards. If the recorder relied on a forward, remote viewing breaks until it is rebuilt; if it relied on a fixed address the router no longer recognises, it may lose its connection entirely. Phoenicia is also in one of the ZIP codes Hudson Valley One listed among Ulster’s worst for cell coverage, so you may not even be able to call a guest to talk them through it.
Three changes make the system resilient. Put the router and modem where guests cannot reach them, in the owner’s closet with the recorder. Use the recorder’s NAT link, which reaches TVT’s servers outbound and does not depend on forwarded ports, as the remote path. And set the recorder to take its address automatically with a reservation on the router, so that if the router is reset the recorder still gets an address and the app comes back once the internet does. We leave a printed card in the closet with the router’s settings in case a reset happens anyway.
Ulster Rules and Paperwork
Kingston caps whole-home rental permits at about 106 — if we lose ours and go back to a long-term tenant, what changes on the cameras?
The camera rules change from a platform’s policy to ordinary landlord-and-tenant privacy. A long-term tenant’s apartment is their home; cameras inside it are out of the question, and outdoor cameras that see into their windows deserve the same masks as before. What usually changes is who watches. With a tenant in place, the owner rarely needs live alerts from the porch, and the tenant may reasonably ask what the cameras cover.
In practice we tidy the system for its new use: remove alert recipients who belonged to the rental operation, such as cleaners and co-hosts; decide with the tenant whether they get their own login to an entrance camera; and make sure the recorder is not on the tenant’s internet account. A 2026 summary of Kingston’s rules says the city reopens a short application window when renewals drop below the cap, so keep the rental-ready channel layout written down in case you return to hosting.
Does registering the rental with the Ulster County Department of Finance, or the state’s new registry, involve the cameras at all?
Not directly. The county registration gives you a Certificate of Authority to collect the four percent occupancy tax and must be displayed where occupants will see it; it says nothing about security equipment. The state law signed in December 2024 and amended in February 2025 lets counties create registries that record addresses, lengths of stay and guest numbers. Neither asks you to list cameras.
Your town’s rental permit is where cameras can come up, because some towns inspect each year and an inspector may look at the house as guests would. A camera in a bedroom or bathroom would be a problem for any reasonable inspector; a disclosed driveway camera is not. Keep your one-page camera table with the permit papers so you can show it if asked.
