Re:USB HDTV (Score 1)

You're partially correct... there are no drivers for USB tuners in the official kernels yet, but there *are* some out-of-tree drivers that are kept reasonably up-to-date:

• This page lists at least one that should work (Lifeview LifeTV). It's been discontinued but can probably still be found here and there. Note that it's only USB 1.1 and 320x480 (not a typo) max resolution, but does support 30 fps at 320x240 with compression.
• The usbvision driver supports a fairly large list of tuners and capture boxes. All of them are USB 1.1, but the driver does appear to support the proprietary compression.

No high-speed (A.K.A. "USB 2.0") tuners or capture boxes are supported yet, but this situation will change dramatically once the Crescentec DC1100 driver is finished.