The Long Slog: Firewire

I get my TV signal directly from my cable digital set-top box (STB), via its firewire port. This is really great, because the signal coming through that port is already a decoded MPEG2 stream, so there's no need to have a tuner card in your mythbox!

MythTV didn't recognize the STB on the firewire port. I had installed and modprobed the ieee1394 kernel module. I first tried following this guide, which got me up and running when I had a mythbuntu box, but it doesn't apply for Gentoo users. Then I found this guide, which seems to be just what the good doctor ordered. I added two more kernel modules: video1394 and raw1394.

After that, mythtv-setup instantly recognized the STB on the firewire port. I set it to p2p instead of Broadcast (which the above guide says is more stable). I should say, I skipped the p2p setup stuff in that guide; I'm interested to see if it will "just work". Why are you laughing?

Woo! It seems to be working! In your face, Murphy!

Addendum: I should note that I had to select "Broadcast" mode for my firewire capture card in mythtv-setup, rather than "P2P".