The problem i had was that the PVR input for xine by default uses the root directory to store its temporary vob files. The partition that my root is located however is rather small and i could only have very small files (and therefore very small recordings if a paused or wanted to go back in a video).
I wanted to change this location but there is nothing on the documentation. A quick Google search turned up nothing. So i looked in the source code and , sure enough, the kind folks had it documented in the comments of src/input/input_pvr.c.
pvr:/<prefix_to_tmp_files>!<prefix_to_saved_files>!<max_page_age>
In other words all you have to do is specify the path in the MRL! Eg:
xine pvr://mnt/xine_pvr_tmp_files/
There are more settings there (like events you can send to tell xine you want teh recording saved instead of being deleted on exit, but i haven’t explored them yet.
Update: I was at #xine on freenode.net and told people about this. 10 minutes later it was fixed in the CVS. Now that’s responsive.