You should have at least 3.0 by now, maybe 3.2 if you've got a Series2. It's in Setup -> System Info.. updates are twice a year-ish and automagically install at 2am after download. The padding script just changes the list of offsets times (in seconds) and their labels.. 3.0+ interprets negative numbers as reverse padding. So it is part of the standard software, sort of.

It could be included someday, but I wouldn't say it's likely.

If you can say setup /programs{0,1} and get empacman installed you could handle basic TiVo hacks if you wanted to.. The only complication is getting bash on the serial port.