The "not-including of dvb by default" applies if you compile yourself with ./configure ...
If you use the Ubunto binary there are good chances that they included the dvb support when compiling vlc (I know for example that the Mandriva-binaries of vlc contain dvb-support). You can test that with:
which should give something like:
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VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus
--dvb-frequency <integer> Transponder/multiplex frequency
or more generally:
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vlc --advanced --longhelp | grep dvb
which should give you a very long list of dvb-options. If this list is empty (or very short with a few non-relevant options containing only the word "dvb") then you don't have dvb support.
When you want to comile vlc with dvb support on your own, you need the dvb kernel-header files which should be installed in:
/usr/include/linux/dvb/
If you don't have this folder on your system you may copy it to this place from a (relatively) recent kernel-source tree:
<kernel_source_tree>/include/linux/dvb/
or from the mercury-driver tree:
v4l-dvb/linux/include/linux/dvb/
either or of these two will work fine and if the kernel or mercury-driver has less than a year there will no problem in compiling vlc with these headers. Maybe your system already contains "/usr/include/linux/dvb/".
Furthermore it is NOT necessary that your kernel-driver of your dvb-card is compiled with the same version of the headers, i.e. if you change later the kernel or dvb-driver (therefore with new headers) you don't need to reinstall the dvb-headers for vlc in /usr/include/linux/dvb/ neither to recompile vlc only for this.
If the headers are absent "./configure --enable-dvb ..." will complain with an error message.