KDETV does not find V4l2 capture card

I have the following problem with kdetv and would appreciate any help or
pointers.

Problem :

When using kdeTv from a none root account kdetv can not find a v4l
capture card and the Channel scan wizard shows all scan option as
disabled (red). But when launching KDE-TV from a root account the
channel wizard finds the tv capture card and happily scans for channels
and I am getting a TV picture.
I understand that the above looks like a permission problem... , but I
can watch TV, scan for channels etc from a none root account using
TVTime. I am rather puzzled that kde-tv can not find the capture card
while TV-Time works without any problems in a none root account.
I have been trying to enable the debug options by enabling the debug
switch when running configure but I am not getting any debug statements
out of kde-tv. ( "configure --enable-debug" ).

Any ideas as to what is causing this ???

thanks andy