So I rebuilt my mythtv box to ubuntu 5.10 and installed the mythtv 0.19 debs from thehunter.ws. So easy to setup. It scanned all my channels, added them into the database and everything just worked! Currently the performance is a bit crap, but I think that more has to do with it buffering to a really crappy filesystem which needs to be recreated.

I give this new version of mythtv two thumbs up!