Radeon 8500 video overlay gone (xawtv and kdetv broken)

[Robert Braddock]

I have a Radeon 8500 video card which I use under linux (debian testing)
as video-in for my computer to act as my tv monitor.  Sometime since the
Summer, this has stopped working and I am having no luck finding any
helpful information by searching.  Most searches just refer to the old
GATOS project, which hasn't done anything for years, but supposedly has
been rolled into xorg's drivers, so shouldn't matter.

Now, I know my card uses a "video overlay" which most tv-type programs
don't seem to care about.  I used to use GATOS's avview to open the
AV-in window, but that stopped working with X a year or so ago, at which
point I went to the less reliable but functional xawtv.  That worked for
a while by itself, but then I needed to run kdetv first, and then xawtv
(and then kdetv again to shut off the audio).  This was especially odd
because kdetv didn't actually ever get the actual video, but it would
reliably get things setup so xawtv could work.  Xawtv still had
problems, though: it would just go blank if you resized it or made it
full screen.  The video would come back if you brought up xawtv's menu,
so the process became: start kdetv, quit it, start xawtv, make it
fullscreen, right click twice to get the menu and get rid of it again,
use the video, quit xawtv, start kdetv, and finally quit it.  What a
mess!  At least it worked, though.

Now, it seems as though my overlay device just isn't there.  Kdetv says
there's no video device at all and xawtv reports "no usable video port
found".  Since kdetv and xawtv are unrelated programs, I'm guessing X is
the one doing something different.

I've looked through the xorg log, and there doesn't seem to be any kind
of errors to follow up on.  I haven't made any config changes since back
when it was working.  All that's changed is there have been updates
installed, but I didn't use the video-in for some months, so I have no
idea what batch of updates broke things, or why.

This is a current debian testing, kernel 2.6.32-5-686, X.org X Server
1.7.7, xawtv 3.95.dfsg.1

Any help tracking down and fixing the problem would be great...  Are
there any other programs that will connect with the video-in overlay for
a Radeon 8500?  If this was intentional, are there any recommended
alternatives (other than new hardware, which isn't an option)?

References:
- Xorg log
  http://concordantthought.com/personal/robert/relay/Xorg.0.20110101.log
- results of "xawtv -v -2"
  http://concordantthought.com/personal/robert/relay/xawtv-v-2.20110101.log

Thanks for anything,
Robert