SlashRose

I'll answer this question as follows. If Kaspersky was not a Russian based AV solution, I would be using it instead of Eset. Note that Kaspersky has moved its corporate headquarters to Switzerland. However, its developers are still based in Russia.

On my system, extensive non-Eset related updating at system startup will slow other apps such as browser startup to a crawl. As such, it is hard to point the finger at Eset in this regard. I have just got into the habit of letting this updating  complete before doing anything else on the PC. Since my boot HDD is noisy as hell, its easy to determine when this updating has completed.

This issue is still going on with release 14.2.24.0 
I too find it very distracting having that icon animation running constantly. It is of little importance as nothing detrimental is happening, it is just very annoying.
- Tim -
 

Another thing I noticed from the posted blocked apps screen shot is all the apps being blocked are Windows apps.
The Eset firewall has a setting titled "Also evaluate rules from Windows firewall" that is enabled by default. What this setting allows is unrestricted inbound network access for any app so defined by a Win firewall inbound rule unless an existing Eset firewall exists that blocks such network traffic. It is imperative that the "Also evaluate rules from Windows firewall" setting be enabled to allow Windows apps to function properly.

I also had a few times under the previous build.

So you knew about this problem (yes, this IS a problem) for several years. And after that you telling your clients - no, this is not a problem. And maybe in the future we fix this problem, that is not a problem. But no fix for several years!
FYI: the solution is simple - in firewall rule you can let user choose path to exe if it is a classical programm, or select from list of installed modern apps. There is API to tell which folder belongs to which installed app. That way user can create rule for whole app.

AFAIK, the eset files are not corrupted - I believe that the issue here is that ESET has updated them but not updated the security hashes.

This is usually accomplished the reverse of what you are doing.  In Win, the default browser would be set to IE11. The advantage of this is if your browsing in FF and then land on an Eset whitelisted banking site for example, Eset would auto open that site in IE11 using Banking and Payment Protection.
BTW - no one including Microsoft recommends using IE11 for anything anymore. Also as far as FireFox goes, Eset creates a separate profile used only for Banking and Payment Protection. The profile FireFox created for non-Banking and Payment Protection browsing activities is not used.

Thanks for the heads-up, I can confirm the issue too and have reported it to developers. Will keep you posted.

I am 100% there with you, I am now disappointed that you make the effort to test the software, report the errors found to the German support and all reported errors in the final, or so-called final, in my eyes nothing more than a very bad beta version is to find again + to find the errors of the previous build again, if this continues with Eset, I will also consider whether I should pay for it and that although I am an absolute Eset I'm a fan and have been using it since NOD v2, I am really very disappointed!

I am 100% there with you, I am now disappointed that you make the effort to test the software, report the errors found to the German support and all reported errors in the final, or so-called final, in my eyes nothing more than a very bad beta version is to find again + to find the errors of the previous build again, if this continues with Eset, I will also consider whether I should pay for it and that although I am an absolute Eset I'm a fan and have been using it since NOD v2, I am really very disappointed!

Yes, the scans with this build take much longer, it takes about twice the scanning time for the same files as the previous build!