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Messages - IanL-S

#1
General / Re: IceBox Roadmap
January 11, 2026, 07:39:25 AM
@MD I was expecting the cost of the next shipment of IceBox to cost a lot more.

Ram and SSD, and even HDD prices are out of control. I purchased a 1TB M.2 about 6 months ago for $86, and it is ow selling for $228.

My plans to upgrade from Ryzen 5 (I mostly have Ryzen 5 PCs) to Ryzen 9 are on indefinite hold. 
#2
The Voynich Manuscript is an episode of Historys Greatest Mysteries - S3 E9. SBS playing fast and loose with program information again! Is it possible to update this in the data base.
#3
Quote from: prl on December 23, 2025, 05:11:23 PM
Quote from: BazzaG on December 23, 2025, 10:49:21 AMPortrait Artist of the Year, assuming you wanted to record it.

We caught that in time to set a recording for the repeat on Thursday (25 Dec).

No such luck with last weeks' Ken Burns' The American Revolution, though - it turned into "news from Bondi" half way through, and even if SBS had been doing "encores" of it, we noticed too late to reschedule, anyway. Looks like a job for onDemand.

Yes, a big hunk in the middle is missing from that episode of he American Revolution. Can the repeat tag be removed from that episode.
#4
On my IceBox with 60 minute post padding I got the full program with several minutes to spare.
#5
General / Re: Obtaining another IceTV Dual Tuner
December 22, 2025, 07:17:19 AM
From my experience, the procedure given by DeltaMikeCharlie will solve the issue.

Ian
#6
General / Re: Obtaining another IceTV Dual Tuner
December 15, 2025, 09:04:30 PM
Just when I decided after extended procrastination to get an RCU v2 ....
#7
Getting Help / Re: Forced EPG refresh
December 06, 2025, 04:58:57 PM
I assume that rebooting the IceBox did not fix this problem.

I have a dim recollection that the "Refresh EPG" option was removed in the expectation that such issues with EPG had been fixed in subsequent firmware. @Daniel Hall may have something to say about this.
#8
IceTV EPG Content / Re: Which Maigret?
November 24, 2025, 10:28:00 AM
Thanks Gai, much appreciated.

Ian
#9
IceTV EPG Content / Which Maigret?
November 22, 2025, 01:35:16 PM
There have been several TV adaptions of the Maigret books, the most recent currently on ABC (2025 version), which was preceded by version commencing in 2016, 1991 (French) and another I remember from the 1960 (BBC) - not the last has not been on TV for many many years. It would help if the EPG data distinguished between the various incarnations, particularly the 2016 and 2025 incarnations.

[EDIT] Just found a reference to a Granada version staring Michael Gambon, made in the early 1990s.
#10
Thanks Gai.

To confuse things there is also a South African series which was broadcast by SBS (I think) at least a decade ago. The program was (apparently) originally broadcast in South Africa in late 2009 and early 2010.
#11
Who Do You Think You Are? (Irish TV series), produced for RTE is not the same as the on produced for the BBC.

According to Wikipedia three seasons were produced (2008, 2009 and 2018). The episode on Adrian Dunbar aired by SBS on 11 November was from the 2018 season. IceTV correctly identifies this a being S03E06, but for the wrong country. It is not clear that this is the case until you see the closing credits.

I do not know if SBS intends to air further episodes from the Irish version - there were 18 episodes made. If there are any future episodes that are S01E**, S02E** or S03E** then they are likely to be from the Irish version rather than the UK version.

Not sure if this is a major problem - just caused me real confusion.
#12
I have seen 2.5" WD Purple advertised, they are a niche product, like the 2.5" WD Red (NAS). The main consideration is the continuous writing to, and reading from, the disk - particularly if you have a live buffer. Standard SATA (either HDD or SSD) throughput is more than enough to record 12+ simultaneous recordings on an IceBox.

For 2.5" WD HDD most now seem to be SMR rather than CMR - almost impossible to find 2.5" CMR disks.

Looks like the cost of SATA SSD and HDD have increased significantly since I last looked. Fortunately I am not in the market at the moment.
#13
Cannot find any information on the chipset used by the IceBox; but it uses a Celeron J4125 CPU [launched in 4th quarter of 2019] and has 8GB of RAM. My BYOB has a Core i5-4250u CPU [launched 3rd quarter of 2013] and 8GB of RAM.
#14
I agree that an M.2 NVMe drive would be overkill. A 2.5" HDD, such as the one I had in my Beyonwiz U4 was able to deal with multiple simultaneous recordings (I did a test once and had about 10 recordings going).

In order to get the price as low as possible, IceTV looked carefully at the minimum hardware needs (this was done more that two and a half years ago). The custom OEM NUC uses older CPU that is more than capable of dealing with the needs of IceBox users. During beta testing we managed more than 10 simultaneous recordings across 4 networks and both RAM and CPU usage came nowhere near the limits. The recording process places limited demands, playback is a little more resource intensive (but you can only playback one recording at a time).

My BYOB have 2015 vintage NUCs performance is similar to my IceTV IceBox.

I understand that IceTV decided on SSD rather than HDD to minimize noise, and chose a NUC that included an internal fan to dissipate heat.
#15
The LibreELEC OS (operating system) supports SATA, SSD and HDD (both 2.5" and 3.5"), either mechanical or SSD, it also supports M.2 and M.SATA drives. I have an IceTV IceBox with a 2.5" SATA SSD, and 2 Intel NUC with M.SATA drives (one 1TB the other 2TB). I do not have any device with an M.2 drive (either SATA or NVMe). I have also IceBox OS on and PC using a 4TB WD RED NAS drive.

PVRs such as Beyonwiz and IceBox place stress on the recoding medium, for that reason optimal solution is to use a drive optimized for media recording (a NAS drive is runner-up). Some mechanical drives do not cope well with PVR duties, particularly those using shingling. Similarly, as we found with the IceTV IceBox non-TLC SSDs do not cope well; the trim function does not seem to overcome the problems.

Ian