Beyonwiz works reliably with IceTV, and padding works (with or without IceTV).
It has both pre- and post-padding, each separately configurable up to 120 min (from a menu, so the choices are limited, but flexible enough - but you can't, for example, have anything between 90 and 120min). It also allows the choice of whether pre-padding, post-padding or the original timers has priority when there are padding clashes in cases where keeping the padding would require more simultaneous recordings than it supports (max 2). I thiny the padding priority choice
over-complicates the interface and makes it harder to
explain, but if you set it to None (rather than Pre- or Post-), then the set timers have priority, and the padding works as it does on most other PVRs. I have padding priority None, and 2 minutes pre- and 25 min post-padding.
The behavior of the Humax complained of in one post here for consecutive recordings of the same service is handled similarly on Beyonwizes: you often end up with part of one of the two consecutive programs in the "wrong" recording. This can be worked around by getting the Beyonwiz to play the two recordings back-to-back, but there's always a short interruption to the playback (~1 sec), and a short break in the actual recording (again ~1sec) for the time the Beyonwiz takes to stop making one recording and start another.
It's in general a pretty stable PVR IMO, though still not without some
bugs. The bugs and wishes list may appear rather daunting, but many are minor or very infrequently occurring. There's a pretty much complete
history of bugs and firmware release notes maintained by Beyonwiz users. I don't know of any similar resource for any other PVR. The bugs list also contains notes about bugs fixed and wishes implemented from the previous version.
Unfortunately, Dealspace is currently showing Out of Stock for new DP-Lite i PVRs. They are lower cost than the DP-P2 and don't have as large HDD (500GB vs 1TB or 2TB), don't have analog in, and don't have a front panel display or memory card reader). But otherwise the capabilities are pretty much the same (apart from obvious differences due to the hardware).
[Beyonwiz beta tester]
