I'm new to tvheadend, I was trying to set it up on my raspberry pi but hit some troubles, I decided to try on my desktop until I've got it mastered then go back to the raspberry pi (just for comfort really, my lounge floor is not the place for geeking out) but I'm having exactly the same issues. Let me explain my process from the top and maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
Step 1: I've used this ppa
https://launchpad.net/~adamsutton/+archive/tvheadend to install tvheadend on Ubuntu 12.10 (on the raspberry pi I just used the latest Raspbmc install which includes tvheadend by default now)
Step 2: I've downloaded the script here
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/dvb/get_dvb_firmware
Step 3: I've checked here
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Kworld_UB499-2T and noted my tv adapter needs IT9137 firmware so I've run ./get_dvb_firmware it9137 and copied the resulting file to /lib/firmware
Step 4: I've checked my adapter is listed in lsusb (see attached lsusb.txt)
Step 5: I've run from a terminal tvheadend -C -d and noted that it seems to detect my adapter (again see output attached as tvheadend.txt)
Step 6: If I go to configuration>tv adapters the dropdown list contains no cards, nothing I do seems to make any difference but I'm sure this should be enough,
I hope I've been detailed enough so someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'm pulling my hair out that I may have made a silly error