mencoder is broken (Feisty)

[Mike Nixon]

Hi all.  I used mencoder to record tv shows quite successfully until a
few days ago.  Now it just creates an empty file, gives me lots of
"ioctl" error msgs and I have to kill -9 the job in order to stop it.
All that's changed is I installed QDvdauthor + xine.   I have tried
reinstalling mencoder + a whole whack of plugins to no avail.  Any, dare
I say, "quick fix"?  Should I remove the entire Ubuntu Studio package
then re-install?    Hope someone has had similar experience & can help.
Regards Mike