Video has seen the same kinds of improvements as sound. Video for Linux (V4L) drivers have been rewritten and improved by V4L2. Knoppix and other Live CDs can often configure video capture cards without user intervention, though this did not work for my card. I've managed to learn how to use streamer to capture AVI movies. The world of players has vastly improved and the user now has a choice of programs that play almost all video formats without user effort.
My notes on fumbling around with an ATI TV wonder card (bttv) can be found here. I could have saved myself lots of time by reading Russell Pavlicek.
Some Xawtv screen shots are here. Yeah, it's what you would expect from the broadcast TV. Composite capture works much better as can be seen in the picture of me illuminated only be my monitor taken with a really nasty old digicam.
With working video capture, I'm going to start looking into movie editing software and gnome meeting. Russell's recording script did not work for me, but the record line did when I put in the options by hand. My first attempt gave me a 44MB one minute sample of a soap opera and a commercial. I'm looking forward to trying out captures from my old tape camera and VCR and seeing if sound works. Gnome meeting is included with Knoppix now and should be a nice test.
Video on Linux is now cheap and easy for the home user. I now have almost all of the capabilities I had with Windows 98 but in a more flexible and powerful form. If I get sound working with video capture and some rudimentary movie editing software, I'll have more than I did under 98, which took a similar amount of effort to set up. At the same time, last year, I was astonished to see that Windows Media Player did not support my camera's AVI formats out of the box on windows 2000.