Before the latest version of the software came along I had my Humax set to start 1 minute before programme start time and stop 3 minutes after end time. If I was recording consectutuve programmes on the same channnel (say from 20:00 to 21:00 and then 21:00 to 22:00) I presumed the first recording woud start at 19:59 and finish at 21:03 and the second would start at 20:59 and finish at 22:03 (it can record 2 programmes simultaneously after all!). However the machine would record the first from 20:59 to 21:00 and the second from 21:00 to 22:03. This woud often mean that the end of teh first programme was at the beginning of the second recording if it ran over, and mean I had to keep the 2nd recording after I had watched it until I had also watched the 1st recording.
I presume that if I switch off autopadding this will invoke accurate recording and the 2 programmes will now record properly. Is this correct?

Basically yes with the caveat that there will be a small unrecorded period which may be as small as five seconds up to a maximum of thiry five seconds. I only notice this with programs that move straight from one to the next such as BBC National News followed by Regional News.

The Humax always tries to use one tuner if it can, dropping autopadding to achieve this. Another approach would be to manually pad both reservations to force the use of two tuners, or extend the duration of the first to include the second (and then split the recordings with the edit function afterwards if you really want to). I once managed to delete an unwatched programme because Iforgot that it was part 2 of a long recording, but this works for me.

Obviously, either method breaks the series link, but as I didn't have it before the .21 update, I still regard it as a bonus when it works.

I didn't think this would work with programmes on the same channel.

I think that the "keeping a tuner free" behaviour doesn't work at all for accurate recording.

1. Concurrent recordings on different channels (on different muxes). I had two recordings at the same time on BBC2 and C4. Both started late. Both recordings stopped bang on 9pm despite the programmes running late. Luckily I didn't miss anything significant. I was expecting this and even added the next progs on each channel as recordings. The after 9pm programmes didn't start recording until the correct time (approx 9:02pm). So despite having continuous timers set NOTHING was recording for several minutes.

2. Consecutive recordings on different channels. In this case the first recording stops when the second prog starts or at the scheduled time, whichever is earlier! I had Torchwood BBC2 and Torchwood BBC3 set to record on Wednesday. The BBC2 recording stopped at 9:50 (before the credits!), the BBC3 recording didn't start for another 2 or 3 minutes. The two progs were obviously scheduled to allow viewers to switch from one to the other.

I wonder if the Humax engineers thought accurate recording was required for occaisional delays/overruns. In reality accurate recording is needed for deliberate, persistent off-schedule timings.