Just a bit of a nudge - I thought I'd try this again with a newer kernel and VDR (2.6.17 in Ubuntu edgy and VDR 1.4.4) in case something small and subtle had been fixed.
Alas no, the original problem still stands as-is:
http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/2006-July/010115.html
I've made an even more rudimentary setup of vanilla VDR + skincurses plugin. No FF card, no output devices.. just a curses console and I still regularly get
Nov 27 22:26:26 plip vdr: [10131] ERROR: can't open filter handle on '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
on channel changes - `lsof -n | grep demux` still shows only 8 or 9 file descriptors open :(
A shame, I'd love to have VDR working with this device - does anyone have any advice, since it works just great in Kaffeine!
Cheers, Gavin.