TV under 9..10

[Grizzly]

Hi All

Can / Is it really this hard to get a TV card to work.

I have a fairly old (Hauppauge) Nova-T PCI Card which has served me very well 
for years (Win98-Win2K-XPPro) B U T now I'm trying to make a permanent move to 
Linux (ubuntu 9.10  desktop) I cant even get the sys to "see" the card

Anyone who has managed this preferably without having to re-compile the kernel 
(can you imagine getting anyone to re-compile XP :-<)

PLEASE