Mint's HDHomerun problem

Everything was going fine with my new Linux Mint 20.3 XFCE installation, which I was considering for use on the desktop PC which I use as a PVR and for processing ISOs and large files in general, until the moment when I fired up the HDHomerun-GUI (hdhomerun-config-gui), tuned in a station, and hit View, to which VLC responded by opening and displaying a black screen.

After wracking my brains over the course of a couple of days, and searching for answers on the internet and finding nothing (which itself is a clue that something's rotten), I've concluded that this is a dirty trick which is implemented by sensing the hardware, and when certain hardware is detected, corrupting or disabling the HDHomerun's output stream so that VLC can't display it. It's the only thing that makes sense, partly because I booted my $200 Brix with an encrypted flash drive installation of Mint 20.3, and was able to watch TV through it, and even record it to the flash drive, although I wouldn't advise recording video to flash drives, especially if they're encrypted. Mint has a reputation for having hardware compatibility issues, but it makes no sense that it would have more than other types of Ubuntu. But when it works, it's great.

I ended up going with Kubuntu 22.04, which I preferred slightly over Mint even before the HDHR problem. Dolphin can't access system folders, but a version with system access and superuser privileges is coming soon. In the meantime, there's Krusader, which is amazing for a file manager that can be installed on Kubuntu with a single 3.5MB package, although it's more cumbersome than Dolphin, so I use it only when necessary.