Blast. Oh well. I guess it's something that is unlikely to be fixable with CF packages either, as it's a pretty core function?
I haven't tried hitting stop whilst on the "cannot start delayed recording at this time" progress screen, but might experiment with it by recording something I don't much care for and seeing what happens. All it shows me at the moment is that warning, a progress bar, and a "close" button which gets rid of the popup when I hit OK. I suspect what it'll actually do is ask me what channel I want to stop, and it'll just stop the live recording of that programme, if it's not stopped already (in which case it probably won't appear anyway). But worth testing even so.
The renaming thing was something I was hoping to avoid because it's a monumental pain in the backside, especially if the prog has already been through the shrinker by the time I get to it because the EPG data is also typically wrong as well (for some reason it seems to save the title/description for the preceding programme, just as it gives the file the name of the following one) so making sure of what the file actually contains involves watching at least part of it through and maybe going off and making reference to online EPGs or printed listings. As well as the whole process itself, which isn't too bad using the webIF but is suboptimal if you have to use the remote...
It is what it is, though, I suppose. It could literally be far worse. Could be a TopUpTV Thompson 6300, for example.