For myself, I have only bought one box - from a wholesaler in Malaga. The rest of my experience is with others in the area who have (mainly) been supplied by local dealers.
I think a lot depends on location as to which box is (absolutely) the best - I know of people in the Costa del Sol who swear that for them the Pace DS430N is even better than the 2600. In my own area the Grundig 3000, which generally has a poor reputation, performs well (as long as the power supply is OK).
The Thomson HD boxes have a lot of problems, of which the worst (for me) is future recordings failing is any signal gets weak. In fact a good tuner is probably their only good feature!
Also, you talk of BBC2. That's just a no-hoper here. Our yardstick is Channel 4 in the afternoon. I have many members of the "Countdown crowd". Countdown is on when the C4 signal is almost at its weakest, and if I can get them Countdown little else matters. The Thomson can get C4 as well as a Pace 2600, and gets the 2D vertical transponders 24x7 the same as the Pace 2600.
But given all its other problems, I wouldn't recommend the HD box to anybody on the fringes unless they are hell bent on subscribing to HD (and I don't think that's worth the money either, but that's another thread!).