Hey man, thanks for testing and reporting bugs (and the scrots). Without you I'd be completely in the dark here. Take a look in About->Credits->Contributors.
I haven't tested gpodder with qt version yet but I promise that I'll be fixing the problem. And as Frank Martin says in the Transporter, you shouldn't make promises you can't keep.
Immediate playback is already implemented but currently disabled and I personally don't want it but if you want it I make a configuration option, just come up with a good name for it.
I think I fixed this problem with passing the "Tool" flag to the playlist window. Modal doesn't work on the desktop where you want to use both windows independently.
if platform.FREMANTLE:
The menus should alreadfy be fixed and the settings dialog too. It seems that "normal" Qt should render just about everything perfectly on n900 without using anything else.
Edit: To clarify, if panucci is not running and I chose to play a file in gpodder it plays it automaticly.
Edit2: Did you try gpodder from git? Better do that before I start looking for this bug as I can't reproduce it myself.
Edit3: The buttons in the playlist window looks a bit weird. I took away some empty icons I had there now and if that doesn't help we may have to take away the clear button as that one already is in the menu anyway.