I lost the epg again tonight, tried to replicate my actions before it went down, but to no avail.
To get the epg back I had to stop all running recordings, 'reselect' IceTV in preferences and do a soft power cycle.
Padding seems to work (in power saving mode as well), but the epg was out on one test recording (Ch 11, 3am ,"Becker" was about 10 minutes late.
Btw.: I"m using an Optus Huawei E583C 3g wifi modem for networking, have full bars on wifi and 3g, no drop outs.