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Im taking a terramaster and converting it to truenas scale. Waiting on the ram and an itty bitty usb drive to arrive.

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I currently running a Qnap TS-464. Currently only 2 drives:

Seagate IronWolf 12TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage - Frustration Free Pack
in a mirror for redundancy. It has 2.5g nics onboard. I upgraded my home network to 2.5g. Very fast. Bought a 5 port & 8 port 2.5g switch. Few 2.5g nics and wow.

I used to run Unraid with 14 hard drives in a huge NZXT tower case. I wanted to show you a picture of the case but I can’t remember the exact model number & its old. So I took a picture for ya.

tower
tower2048×1536 263 KB

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Review from a Amazon customer. Maybe not true but I thought Id share:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great hardware but horribly buggy software that constantly calls home to China

Reviewed in the United States :us: on February 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

Why did my review get deleted? It was up for a while and then disappeared.

The RockTek G2 has just the hardware specs I want and has a snappy, smooth UI with clean-looking Android TV. But it’s full of bugs with HDMI-CEC and other problems. The worst was that it developed a bug that would cause it to reboot 3 minutes after going to sleep… over and over and over again. If I was using another device on my TV, the G2 would interrupt me by switching input when it rebooted. At night, my TV would never sleep because the G2 would constantly wake it up.

Also, despite RockTek being a Taiwanese brand, this is just a Chinese device from SEI Robotics. RockTek is just the label. The G2 gets not just hardware but also firmware updates from SEI in Shenzen and constantly calls home to them. There is no effective English-language support, no warranty, and no English privacy policy.

Went back to Nvidia Shield TV Pro. It’s a bit old, but well-supported by a reputable company.

Edit #2:
I gave the G2 a third try. They seem to have fixed the constant rebooting issue. But it still has so many glitches. For example, when waking from sleep, sometimes it will only connect to 2.4 ghz Wifi, and then get terrible network performance, unable to do 4k HDR without constant buffering. Only a restart will fix this. Also, sometimes when waking from sleep, connected external storage, like a flash drive, will not show up anymore, and you have to physically disconnect and reconnect. Bluetooth pairing just freezes on the pairing screen. Button presses work inconsistently. So very glitchy.

It has great specs but it’s far too buggy even after several months and a couple of firmware updates.

Also, I found the Shield too old, lacking to many codecs and HDR formats, and getting poor wifi performance.

I settled on the Fire TV Cube. It has an annoying homescreen, but for actual streaming - which is the point - it just works, really well.

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Just checked Amazon Canada and its not even on there. Only on American Amazon.

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about amazon reviews, I find it hard to believe most and always skepticle. Lets get a review from @AMD237 after a few weeks of usage. So far from what he sees it looks promising.

Amazon reviews are basically out of control with competitors making false claims to bolster their own products…the Wild Wild West :joy: :crazy_face:

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If you believe every Amazon review, you would never buy anything lol. I’m as picky as anyone out there on these boxes. I promise I’m not giving it good marks to try to sell these. If there is an issue or something I don’t like, I will share that with everyone. So far, the biggest issue I see is the lack of ventilation holes, but you know me, I already have a fan underneath and it seems to run fairly cool anyway. If they had a bad, buggy update at one point, that seems long gone by now. That kind of thing would drive me absolutely bonkers.

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Quick update…I put the newer Superman build on to see how she handled. Very snappy for the most part. Occasionally a slight delay when the icons above were loading, but all the other menu buttons and maneuvering was quick. Loaded Kodi 20.1 fast and had no issues authorizing RD and finding/playing high quality sources. I don’t like builds, so I uninstalled it for a more custom build with my preferred addons, but would be a great Kodi box if that is your preference.

Also, the google assistant/microphone work great, if that is important to you.

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20230425_190928
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I really like this box. Just solid all the way around. Super certified, great specs, easy to use. I know the Onn box will be super popular because of the low price, but this thing is a beast. Anyone looking for a medium price, high performance box, you may want to consider the G2. Let me know if you want me to test anything else. I haven’t tried to expand the storage yet, 32gb is plenty for me. Let me know if you need any more information on it!

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Wow, it looks like a drone is flying around with your tv :joy:…and to think they make fun of my boxes :skull:

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Have you tested the wifi-6 on this box? I need to get a good wifi6 box for a guy. He could care less about certs. Wants to use with tivimate only, his requirements 4gb/32 or 64 and wifi-6

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Ron…wifi6 works great on this box. I also ran a hard line to it and verified the gigabit ethernet.

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KM6 amd G2 are both great options.

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yea, I went with the km6 since I already have a spare

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About 3 weeks in using this box on my porch. I continue to try and find issues and things I don’t like, but I’m struggling to do so. It has been very impressive, handled everything I have thrown at it. It passes through digital audio into my sound bar flawlessly and streams 4k content very well. The remote is a higher quality than most, with more button options. Every add-on for Kodi installed and runs great when I want it to. Not sure if anyone else has tried this box, but if you are looking for a higher end box without the $200+ price tag, I would recommend trying this one.

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Love the box so far! What I can’t figure out is the HDMI-CEC flickers my TV when plugged in. Have box HDMI to TV and HDMI to soundbar. And the box doesn’t recognize the IR power option to turn off soundbar just volume. Any help be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Insignia F50 Fire TV 70"
Sony HTSD35 soundbar

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I still love mine. It was the perfect box for my porch. As far as the flickering, we may need to troubleshoot that. But, I should mention I upgraded to two of these: Amazon.com: UGREEN 8K HDMI 2.1 Cable Certified 6.6FT Ultra High Speed HDMI Cord 4K 120Hz 48Gbps HDCP 2.2&2.3 eARC HDR Dolby Compatible for PS5 Xbox Series X Nintendo Switch Roku TV Laptop Monitor : Electronics

I won’t say it solved everything, but the HDMI 2.1 at least made me feel better lol. The IR power off sounds like a setting that isn’t yet setup within the box settings.

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:white_check_mark:…always check hdmi cable or over heating if flickering before digging down.

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The TV is 60hz if that makes it maybe flicker with CEC HDMI? The IR setup works just for volume and when I try to setup for power off/on it walks me through setup but doesn’t recognize power option. Takes me through 6/6 trys.

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Box works perfect without HDMI CEC using just optical, but then I run into issues with IR power off setup for soundbar. Volume setup works just not power.

This is the cable using for HDMI CEC…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014I8SIJY/ref=twister_B0BGNG1294?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

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I’m thinking its the Fire TV itself not liking CEC. If I put that box on a Insignia Roku TV using CEC it works as normal.