Xawtv-remote and v4lctl can be used to control a video4linux driven TV card. Xawtv-remote passes the command to a already running xawtv or motv instance using X11 properties. V4lctl is a command line tool that sets the parameters directly.
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 98924 sep 10 05:22 /usr/bin/v4lctl -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6592 sep 10 05:22 /usr/bin/xawtv-remote -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 sep 10 05:22 /usr/share/man/es/man1/v4lctl.1.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2793 sep 10 05:22 /usr/share/man/es/man1/xawtv-remote.1.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 sep 10 05:22 /usr/share/man/man1/v4lctl.1.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2503 sep 10 05:22 /usr/share/man/man1/xawtv-remote.1.bz2