Just cancelled my cable TV (UPC Ireland) and am looking at buying a new Linux STB.
Currently have a 3yr old ET9000 and a newer ET4000. The ET9000 has a Sony PlayTV usb tuner plugged into it for DVB-T, and both are connected to my T90 dish.

Have been looking at the hardware specs for the current mainstream stb's to see what has changed compared to my ET9000. The changes I see are, new generation Broadcom chipsets, faster/more cpus, more flash/memory, gigaspeed lan, support for >2 tuners, p&p tuners, HD PIP, h/w transcoding, HDMI in, lcd display.
Am I missing anything?

Is there a 'must have' feature(s) that is worth looking out for?
Besides the all round gains from the newer Broadcom chips, does more flash or memory do anything?

Would it be fair to say that manufacturers support for fixing/updating drivers is one of the main key's to a boxes success, along with image team support?

Of the current manufacturers, would anyone involved in image development/support care to comment how good/bad the following are:-

VU+ (solo2, duo2)
GigaBlue (quad plus)
XTrend (et8000, et10000)
Technomate (nano 3T)
Golden Interstar (lx3)
Mut@ant (hd2400)

Appreciate any comments
WW