I am VERY happy to report that a fresh install has cured practically all the problems listed. At the moment, the SVN for 2006-05-01 seems the most stable and I think I will use this until the next new release.
I still get the ocassion freeze when minimising MP to the sys tray, but I can live with that. I changed the powerscheduler setting from hibernate to suspend and it works perfectly and every recording is made.
One minor problem left to deal with (made under Hardware Support forum) is that the Cinergy 1400 (DVBT) card only records a 5.48kb file each time. I'm thinking it is probably card related and not MP....
MP is an awesome package. Can't wait for the next release.