My mistake. It is 1.02.28.
Not a problem. .29 has never been distributed by OTA, it is only available as a download from the beta site.
Yes that's what happened to me. There was a clash on the normal channel and it recorded once but no more.
If you are recording from minority channels, you can expect this kind of thing. The broadcasters don't take enough care of the codes which control the recording behaviour. It does not explain losses on BBC though.
You said these reservations had completely disappeared from the schedule (Guide >> yellow), and not just pushed down the list to the --/-- entries. I don't think we've ever seen anything like that (without the schedule being completely erased). Are you absolutely sure nobody's been fiddling with the remote control?
It's possible you never set them for series record in the first place, but even if you did, by viewing the reservation in the schedule and then exiting by OK rather than Cancel (or Back, or Exit) would convert the reservation to manual, with no series linking and no AR/auto-padding. A non-series recording would delete from the schedule list having recorded.