yes, i have heard similar opinions about LG's webos.
panasonic has firefox os... which imho is not so bad... the basic interface is similar to e2 (lacking skins, channel icons... but what the heck).. i got used to it pretty fast.
hbbtv works perfectly... you have netflix, amazon, watchever apps on the tv... it even has a sat-ip client and server integrated... so the only thing missing are more than 2 tuners for recording.
so, for me any cheap non-4K e2 box with 1 fbc tuner or 4 conventional tuners will be good enough as dvr.
not planning to buy expensive high-end boxes anymore.