Home Security Cameras Close-Up View

the problem might be either camera or DVR itself.
Some googling says:
Product Highlights
Up to 960H, 30 fps Recording (960 x 480)
Up to 1920 x 1080 HDMI Output
View, Record, Play, Back Up, Remote View

Video is most likely stored as mpg, which is notarious for compression errors and doesn't scale all that well as far as small details go. Scaling 960x480 to fullHD wont help especially if original camera video is first scaled down to 960x480.

Case in point, even if you did invest in brand new top-notch 4k camera, it's output would be scaled down to 960x480 from that 3860x2048 (huge loss of detail and additional compression artifacts, making small details unreadable)
Then you try to find the license plates and look through the video, it is probably scaled up to fullHD (1920x1080) as you view it, adding yet MORE artifacts and loss of detail.

In any case, to get something identifiable (license plates might not be possible even then, depending on angle/lighting/speed of vehicle) you would need to get cameras that record in 1080P and DVR that also record at same 1080P resolution.


Not to mention that it might be illegal to record things outside your own property. (It is in here and DVR's can usually be told to not record if movement is "outside" the area)

However, I'm not security expert on the matter or the possibly applicable law in your country so take the above with grain of salt.

Edit:
It also seems that the price between 960H cameras and 1080P cameras (960x480 vs 1920x1080) is pretty much none.
Single 1080P camera, $65 or so
http://www.amazon.com/LBV-2521-Analog-Bullet-Security-Camera/dp/B010MTKIJQ/ref=pd_sim_sbs_421_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1GTR264TMEEBM60JSENJ&dpID=41CoZrmDxrL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_
and pack of 4 960H $270 (making it 65 each)
http://www.amazon.com/Lorex-CVC7711PK4B-Weatherproof-Vision-Security/dp/B00PDHX9Z8/ref=pd_sim_421_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=1B3ZX6J4BSM3AWY3ZSGB

Even whole setups with 8 cameras cost only like $470:
http://www.amazon.com/Lorex-Channel-Security-System-Cameras/dp/B0122YSFC6/ref=sr_1_1?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1444839629&sr=1-1&keywords=lorex+dvr+1080P

Of course, as noted, none of them have 24 inputs but... if you needed that many, I think the whole setup would end up as more complicated or you would have camera's watching every angle of every corner of house and yard.