Comment 53 for bug 634211

The howto at #52 seems of little use to me since this is not a problem specifically related to mencoder/mplayer, which were just the tool of choice of the OP.
As already stated in other messages this regards everyone who is trying to get audio out of an analogue TV card in maverick, most noticeably with mythTV.
The point is not if mencoder is able or not to capture from ALSA, but that TV cards are not offering that option! (AFAIK they just offer OSS for that purpose).

And believe me: academic discussions about an obsoleted API, grooving pains moving towards a better audio system, or the need for progress are not so relevant when your wife stares at you asking why the recording of her soap is totally silent...

Still the only valid workaround, for tv card users, I've found so far by investigating all the bugs related to this one is to compile a custom kernel with OSS enabled like in posts #17-22 of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/579300