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This is my concern.

1.  I don't want a Celeron based NUC, even if it is more than enough to run a DVR.  I'd rather get a Gen 8/9/10 i5 with at least 8GB DDR4 RAM

2.  I'd rather not use 2.5" SATA SSD drive, I would prefer to use a 2TB M.2 SSD, as the hardware from that era should support all the M.2 storage.

3.  Long term, I can either get a USFF PC with 2 x PCIe 3.0 or 2 x PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots and if I really need to, I could format the second drive as storage, eventually moving it to a 4TB External SATA HDD.

I think you will have difficulty locating anything new in the NUC Gen 8/9/10 i5 range. Even if you did it's likely they would be charging a premium because of their rarity. Maybe a refurbished unit.

All of these will give you an M.2 SSD option and at least 8GB DDR4 RAM, but if you wanted to also fit a secondary disk drive, say a 4TB 2.5" SSD, then you would need a "tall" variant.

I hope that explains what I'd like to do, but I am happy to start with a Genuine Ice TV Box first, and then build something custom, as I've seen explained in previous posts.

I'd suggest that you ask the IceTV people if they know of any problems with fitting and mounting a 4TB SSD.

Cannot find any information on the chipset used by the IceBox but it uses a Celeron J4125 CPU

According to Google's (largely excellent IMO) AI bot "the Celeron J4125 is a System on a Chip (SoC)".

Three comments:

1. IanL-S could confirm, but if Icebox is based on the Geminilake NUC then it *exclusively* uses the 2.5" SATA form factor drive i.e. no mSATA or M.2 option The Geminilake NUC was something of a curiosity because generations before and after all (to my recollection) had the chewing gum stick SSD option right back to the first manufactured. I think I acquired pretty much one of every generation of NUC up to the 14th, and because I was really only interested in their use as a HTPC, rehoused them in fanless cases.

2. My Geminilake NUC was the Pentium Silver model. From what I could tell from earlier chat on this forum Icebox is a Celeron variant. It was difficult to tame the heat output from the Pentium Silver NUC, my recollection was that there were limited options for configuring or disabling turbo options in the bios, and it always ran hotter than any of my other NUCs. It was however among the first of the NUCs I acquired that was capable of rendering HEVC Main 10 and it's still in use as a HTPC at my son's house, a testament to its durability.

The Celeron variant would likely have much less heat output than the Pentium Silver variant, and running LibreELEC would be minimally challenged CPU-wise. I don't think there have been any reports of overheating of Icebox, or come to that of excessive fan noise. Having said that, in my opinion, the inbuilt fan is the major weak point of all NUCs and a right royal PITA if necessary to dismantle for cleaning or replacement. Keep them away from dust!  I have my BYO installed and running in an 8th generation NUC housed in a fanless case, and it barely gets warm to the touch.

3. Your comment that the 2.5" SATA SSD option for Icebox would be somehow inferior to an M.2 option is valid when considering file transfers to and from the device, but not in my opinion for general PVR operations. LibreELEC is a lightweight application that runs perfectly well even on a 2.5" spinner. My installation is on a 2.5" 1TB WD Blue HDD.

A final observation, you expressed a preference for Icebox rather than BYO because of support considerations. In my experience there is sufficient IceTV support for BYO barring hardware, particularly as there is also the forum for users to rely on for answers to issues that may arise. Icebox would likely be the choice for most users who put a premium on convenience, but if you really want to go down the route of equipping Icebox with an M.2 SSD then BYO looks to be your only option.

I have an IceTV IceBox with a 2.5" SATA SSD, and 2 Intel NUC with M.SATA drives (one 1TB the other 2TB).

Is the 2.5" SATA SSD any greater capacity than 1TB? OP is more interested in an IceBox than the BYO option.

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.

OP is looking for a 4TB option. The Samsung 870 evo is a TLC SSD, but the question is are there any issues with mounting this size SSD in IceBox? As far as I can tell from looking at one (I have some of these SSDs) they look to be the same dimensions as 1TB so shouldn't present any problems with physically installing them in IceBox.

Sure, the IceTV box is so small I'm never going to fit a 3.5" SATA HDD in there, but maybe I clone the 1TB SSD to a 2TB or 4TB SSD and then copy off the content to a old spinning disk providing this is a possibility please?

If the IceBox can fit and mount a 4TB SSD then there would be no need to clone the 1TB SSD provided. Just install the IceBox software using the USB method outlined in IcceBox Help.

I saw some issues with mounting a 4TB SSD drive on the LibreELEC forum, but as far as I could tell nothing that couldn't be overcome. It would be useful if anyone with experience running large capacity SSDs in an IceBox could chip in here.

Keeping the content for myself for the future is something I would like to do please, is that possible please?

Both the T4 and IceBox have SMB support so I don't see any problems with copying files from one to the other via an intermediary such as a networked Windows PC. Only the .ts files need to be transferred, with the only hitch I can see being the format of the T4 filenames being somewhat user unfriendly. It is however possible to discern the program and date from the T4 files and there should be no issue with playback on IceBox, although I suspect that subtitles will not be selectable unless files are muxed to a MKV container that can be parsed by LibreELEC. I've never tried it.

An EPG that can read the entire program description thing and being able to clone the M.2 NVMe drive is definitely things I want to do as well please.

From what I can see IceBox provides the same level of program description in its IceTV guide as the T4.

I don't have an IceBox, just a BYO, but I'm pretty sure that IceBox is based on a Geminilake NUC that uses the 2.5" SSD form factor, not M.2.

Of course I've been out of the Film and TV game for a while now, but I try to keep up with the tech but in this instance I really just want to know whether the IceTV Box 4 Tuner is the DVR for me and of course we probably all have Plex servers at home with TBs of content?? 😜🤣👍🏻

I have no experience with Plex or NAS but from what I see on Google LibreELEC should be able to cope with either. Again someone with direct experience would be helpful here.

Anyway I managed the job, reassembled the IceBox and plugged it in and it just worked (thankfully).

Well done sorting that out with Daniel Hall. I haven't seen that reported before, and it occurred to me that it might be related to some SSD instability rather than the linux installation. If it happens again, that's where I'd be looking.

It looks OK for me (ACT region).

It eventually came through for both my T2 and IceBox, but while the T2 automatically deleted the timer, the IceBox timer had to be deleted manually.

Hi PRL,
Repeat flag has been added.

cheers Gai

Doesn't a[[ear to have come through to my BW T2 or IcceBox.

I think that it's possible to set up a Harmony activity so that no power action is taken when a device needs to be added when switching to an activity. But it's not clear to me that power on/off management by the Harmony is the problem, though it might be.

It may depend on harmony model, but with the 200 and 300 series that I use, activities trigger power toggles, but individual devices can also be power toggled on/off.

So if OP has an activity that includes the BW, programmed onto the harmony remote, then it would seem logical to disable that and see if it makes a difference to the BW behaviour.

I want to set the opacity of the background because there are times when the subtitles end up right over some text  in the program.

As far as I can tell you can only set the opacity of the text (sixth line down in the subtitles menu) to something less than 100% which is the default. If I do that then the text becomes less vivid, and for all I know might be less opaque. I can't tell but you could try it.

Make sure you have Settings level at Expert to be able to do this.

I can use a mouse and/or keyboard to control IceBox, but I think you should be able to use the IceBox remote to do it.

Subtitle colour setting will only apply to text that is not tagged with a font colour by the broadcaster. So setting the default to anything but white will not override the different colours used to indicate the speaker.

G'day,

I wanted to make the background of subtitles NOT with 0% so I went to Settings>Player>Subtitles and selected a light grey colour for the background. I stayed clear of the text settings but now I ended up with green text on a grey background.

No problem, I set everything back to standard, except I still have green text! Rebooting does nothing.

How can I get back to default settings?

Thanks

Are you sure you want a background? I use a black border.

It looked to me like white is the default subtitle colour setting. Fifth line down in the subtitle menu you can click on the colour and a palette pops up.

So default settings look like colour white, background type no background.

When required we switch the TV on via a Harmony Remote to view free to air or anything from media playback. This is where the problem occurs.

It may be that you have the harmony remote configured with an "activity" to switch on/off both the TV and the Beyonwiz at the same time. The "activity" switches are a power toggle, so if one or other, or both, of the the devices are switched off then hitting the ON button will power them on, and vice versa.

If you wish to have the Beyonwiz on permanently, then having such an activity programmed into the remote will interfere with that when you power the TV on.

I suspect that this 'feature' was always there, it's just that the series and episode numbers weren't being fed into TVH correctly.

It looks like it depends on whether or not series and episode information is given in the sub-titles. That has been going for some time now. For example I have Four Corners recordings going back eight weeks showing series and episode number in the sub-title. Today Muster Dogs has series and episode numbers in the sub-title, Great Australian Road Trips does not. I don't know why, but they may just be idiosyncrasies of the EPGs provided by ABC and SBS.

Maybe there has been a change to the default format for recordings. I wouldn't know because I use a custom format $t ($s)_$c_%d-%m-%Y.$x.

...but I'm unsure how to transfer my recordings to another drive first, as I would like to keep them...

If you have a Windows PC networked with IceBox then you can access all your recordings through file explorer. At the Network area in explorer click on the address bar and type in the IP address of the IceBox thus "\\xx.xx.xx.xx" (without quotes) where xx.xx.xx.xx is the IP address of the IceBox.

Recordings are in the "Recordings" folder.

Then copy to your portable HDD plugged into the Windows PC.

I tried swapping ports on the back of the TV, as well as using a brand-new HDMI cable that was still in its packaging.

The suggestion was to try a different TV/PC monitor. All you are doing here is confirming that IceBox has an issue with your current TV. With a different TV/PC monitor it will tell you if the issue is with IceBox or your current TV.

Make sure that the DHCP server in the router is enabled, and that the T4 network interface is set to DHCP, then reboot the router then reboot the T4.

If you still have problems then consult first with the technical support service of your ISP who should either have provided the hardware used to connect you to the internet, or given you the option to provide your own. If the latter then you may need to enlist the services of an independent networking specialist to help you set it up.