Building and running MythTV -0.26

After running Myth 0.26 for a few weeks on my SL6 laptop I thought I 
would like to experiment with patches and have tried rebuilding using 
Stephen's specfile (posted 2 December) and a new git download.  That 
worked fine, but afterwards the original installation wouldn't play 
properly.

The problem seemed to be that the build required nvidia support and the 
video hardware is Intel.  Playback worked again after removing the 
nvidia packages.  I tried disabling some nvidia options in the specfile 
but the build cleaned itself away near the end, leaving nothing.

I could install nvidia, build, remove nvidia, but feel there ought to be 
a better way.  Any suggestions?

John P