rtl2832u+r820t dvb-t usb

I have a rtl2832u+r820t dvb-t usb dongle; I use linux (x86).

There is good support for using it as sdr.
However, using it to watch dvb-t (I am in Europa) turned out to be difficult.
The only way that worked: downgrade my linux kernel to 2.6.33.3, and compiling these sources:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ultra-cheap-sdr/QiIo7834sLI/7YpqSRnYud4J

which forced me to using an older commit of v4l (mercurial df33bbd60225), and to comment out all references to rtl2832u_rc_keys_map_table.

In a word: it works, but the situation is disappointing.
Since such dongles are probably to be sold massively (taking the place of the dismissed e4000-based ones), can anybody help me porting this stuff to a more maintainable form?

PS: Be aware: identification of these cheap dongles can be very messy. In my case, lsusb returned 0bda:2838, which is the same as other ones having e4000 or fc0012, as ezcap EzTV646. Even the appearance can be misleading: there are e4000 looking exactly the same.