Display MoreFair point - so the equation seems to be - pay double for a well-supported box (up front), versus pay once for a poorly supported box, and if things go wrong, buy another one a few years later.
But presumably by then the cheaper one will be either Moore cheaper (geddit!) or have Moore functionality.
Moore's law innit?
Another aspect of support is whether the model you have invested in is still supported, Fortec dropped off support on the Passion which was irritating, and concentrated on the newer models. When there is no money in it then support tends to drop off.
What im saying is this you could go down the route of a clone but then you would need to source out a site that does clone images and remember clone images are usually real images that have been doctored so to speak if you go to ebay then you may be lucky and get a cheap good box from someone selling one on the other hand you could buy someones problem and end up sorting it out.
Codar made a very good point regarding VU they have constantly supported there boxes since they came out so have Dreambox and even Xtrend that i use myself and a few other well known brands but i once bought a box from another source and although its still functional the firmware for it dried up so what im saying is if you check the sponsors site you will see all the boxes they sell are supported for many years not 2 minutes.
As i said in my first post the price of boxes has never ever been cheaper i paid over 1k for my first box in this hobby in 1990 and i consider this the best time to buy a good box as boxes now are at there cheapest if you are thinking well il get one cheaper in a years time if anything goes wrong with the cheap box i buy that may prove to be a mistake as i say boxes now are not only cheaper but come with more features so features cost money and i believe the price will rise --another thing to consider but slightly off the mark is the memory on the box and the processor speed this can make a difference when loading lots of plugins you dont want your box to be bogged down so you have to consider many things while choosing the right box.
Have you any friends near you who have say a VU or other top brand that you can see in action sometimes this can help you decide or go to youtube most boxes are on there showing what they are capable of