Xawtv is my pipeline into the non-geek universe. Used in conjunction with my television tuner card, it allows me to watch teevee in the comfort of my own X session.
It's
essentially a
video4linux viewer, but it's got a
whole bunch of other
features I never
use such as a
webcam updater and
radio tuner. It's got both an
X client and
framebuffer viewer. It's
written by some guy in
Germany, the same dude who
wrote the
booktree video4linux driver, I think...