Klaus / Mario - thanks for the feedback / info about filters.
I will probably stay with the filters in 2.0.6 for DVB-T and DVB-T2 as it gives me good functionality.
The Freeview HD EPG is quick in this config - a few minutes to get the full EPG.

A couple more questions...

a) In later versions, the conditional

if (Setup.SetSystemTime && Setup.TimeTransponder)

was removed for the TDT PID filter. What was the reason for that?

b) With more recent kernels (3.4 and 3.12, I think anything higher than 3.0) I'm seeing regular dmesg events like so

usb 1-1.2: dtv_property_legacy_params_sync: doesn't know how to handle a DVBv3 call to delivery system 0

I'm not sure what causes this (no other errors), but it's related to the older DVB-T receivers. VDR is built with the same kernel/DVB as the machine it runs on. Is this just a driver issue, or is there a test VDR could/should do based on API to avoid making the unhandled DVBv3 call ? The receiver functions well for TV reception as far as I can tell, and though I can filter the messages going to syslog, all these dmesg events lose the bootup info.