/dev/video contents and MAKEDEV

Hello ,
I am working with RH7.3;
I had perofrmed cd to /dev and
I had deleted the contentes of /dev/video and /dev/video itself .

(This files are: em8300, em8300_ma,em8300_mv,em8300_sp ).

This were the files that I deleted.

My qusetion is : for what this files are needed If i can use xawtv
without them ? What's there purpose ?

and another question:
I saw in many places on the net that you should do :
ln -s /dev/video0 /dev/video  to use a video driver.
This of course creates a soft link under /dev/video (to /dev/video0).
But again ,I did run xawtv after deleteing the contents /dev/video ;

So again - for what is it soft link needed ?

regards
sting

_________________________________________________________________