Always have great difficulty with mencoder, the mplayer recording thing.

I use tvtime to watch TV mostly. On my system, mysteriously, this stops mencoder from working. To get it to work run
Code:
artsdsp mplayer tv:// -tv freq=823.25:input=1:immediatemode=0
first, or whatever is suitable for your system. I.e. get a TV picture using mplayer first. (input=1, means composite; immediatemode=0, note the 3 m's, means don't use any wire from the tv-card to the sound card) Then there is a chance of mencoder working.

For sound, plug everything in sight in, go to alsamixer and unmute everything and turn on all capture devices with the space bar. Hit <tab> to go to the capture devices.

Brought this up because mencoder is such a bastard and you tend not to realise tvtime is buggering things.
Code:
artsdsp mencoder -o mencoderTest.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq -oac pcm  tv://