I'm writing an HTPC application called boxstar http://boxstar.sourceforge.net, and its latest functionality is to launch xine to watch VDR. The only way I could think of to be able to use both boxstar and VDR with the same remote control was to have boxstar always in charge of the remote and pass button presses on to VDR via the HITK svdrp command.
The problem is that the svdrp connection has a tendency to freeze. I have to wait a few minutes for the socket to timeout at the system level. VDR's SVDRP timeout is set to 0, but I don't think that's making a difference. I think the reason other programs such as vdradmin work OK is that they open and close the connection for every command, but that approach is too sluggish for boxstar, which is supposed to be a transparent, primary interface to controlling VDR.
For some reason the problem was much worse before I used Python's makefile() function, which is a sort of equivalent to C's fdopen() ie it buffers the socket and provides some more convenient, higher level ways to access it. Since using makefile() the problem has almost gone away, but it still happens very often when pressing the Red button to open the progress bar.
FWIW I'm using df_xine with a Matrox G450's TV-out.