Sounds like a good idea to me. Of course you can only do something when you're @home (or have web access), so a workaround would be to add the next show.
Another option for padding would be to set the padding values per channel. Some channels (here in Holland especially the commercial ones) are notoriously running late, so you would need about 15 min. post-padding for them to record reliably. But you wouldn't want 15 min. for the reliable ones because of the higher probability of overlapping recordings.
Main problem then is that if a new show starts on another channel whilst a recording is in progress, the new one will take priority.
If you need long padding, then maybe you want the already running show to have preference (otherwise you would not have such big paddings in the first place) but start the other show as soon as the other one has finished recording. I'm thinking of the second show being a sports event, where it is a bigger problem to miss the end than the beginning.
I don't know if you currently have the option to do something like this without having to manually specify the start time of the second show?
ASUS Pundit-R
Celeron-D 330 2.66 GHz
2 x 256 Mb DDR-400
160 GB Western Digital HD
Hauppauge PVR-250
Well even being able to pad like 30 seconds would mean the difference between an entire show and cutting off the ending, it's been happening a lot lately on certain shows, all they need is 30 seconds more, 1 minute would be too much.
For some reason I missed that you could always change the padding values when you schedule a recording. What you are after is of course changing it when the recording is already running.
At the moment you also can't change the padding values when the show has only been scheduled and is not running already. When you want to do that you need to cancel the recording and reschedule it using the new values (this means you have to search for the show again).
The possibility to change the values for a scheduled recording would be a very nice feature in this case (if you can also change them when the recording is already in progress).
ASUS Pundit-R
Celeron-D 330 2.66 GHz
2 x 256 Mb DDR-400
160 GB Western Digital HD
Hauppauge PVR-250