I purchased a USB TV tuner device hoping to be able to do two things: a) receive (and possibly record) analog NTSC TV broadcasts, and b) accept analog input from a VCR to digitize some old VHS media.

After a lot of red herrings and attempts to install drivers, I finally understood that the device had been detected in Ubuntu Jaunty without any extra effort. Configuring the device was a little more complicated, however. I installed the following packages to help diagnose whether the device was working: dvb-apps, dvb-utils, w-scan. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that apparently Video4Linux doesn’t support receiving analog signals with this device (my fault for not doing more research, I guess). We don’t have digital signals where I live (and I don’t have digital cable or any other usable sources available).

Potentially helpful info here and here.

Plan B: try to get the device running under Windows XP in VirtualBox.