See comments below on VM Support Forum, at least Nick is being honest which I give him credit.
So it looks like they are now working on 1 tuner use for back to back recordings on same channel and configurable padding, which hopefully therefore means all recording settings for express links so you can set your own default.
In the mean time you will have to go into your recording settings and manually change the options. I am almost always setting up series links for what I watch so it tends to be a onetime exercise per series at least not every recording.
On the recording hiccups feature, just ignore, I’ve only ever used it once to find a clash of recordings which means one will not happen, so you will get a message in this file. However, when Tivo is set to “New and Reruns” you get messages about repeats it is not recording due to the 28 day rule on recording reruns, so this folder tends to be cluttered with rubbish information as a result. If you choose “New Only”, which I now do all the time, then this folder is a lot neater as there are no repeat “not recording” messages.
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/.../913291/page/4
With regards to soft padding (i.e. using two tuners to record the same channel with padding back to back), this is a defect. The change we asked for wasn't implemented as expected, and we can't roll back. TiVo are working on it as fast as they can, but it will take some time. Otherwise with soft padding, please make sure you have clipping turned on, as the padding should be dropped if it would otherwise clip the beginning of a new show. That's the way it is supposed to work.
With regards to user configurable padding, it is absolutely something that we want to introduce. As I alluded to in an earlier post, the change requests provided in each code release are negotiated with our middleware provider. We have seen considerable feedback demanding this feature and have taken that into account in these discussions. Until it is signed off, I really can't promise anything. However, I think you can agree that we've usually made the issues raised on this forum a top priority for development.
Each TiVo code release goes through extensive alpha and beta testing, and in the case of this latest code release we even had a pilot before it was pushed to all boxes. With regards to the back-to-back tuner detect, I'm not aware if this was spotted before release to the general public. If it was indeed raised in development, the process to fix this would probably have delayed the code release altogether. Given the number of important changes we made to the platform in the latest code release, including allowing the ability to launch the Spotify App, the TiVo Buddy, and Red Button, it may have been imprudent to delay the entire release for this defect.
Nick Ontiveros
TV Strategy, Digital Entertainment