Viewing the Firewire Connector

There are two other data transmission interfaces that are competing with DVI - “the IEEE 1394 Firewire and USB (universal serial bus) 2.0.”

Both of these interfaces use some form of compression. When a signal is compressed. Transmitted then uncompressed, it has more potential difficulty than a signal sent uncompressed, like DVI. Although both Firewire and USB are often used to connect camera’s and other DTV (digital television) devices, neither should be the format of choice for large panel high definition displays.

Firewire has three connectors 9pin, 6pin and 4pin.

The 9pin is for connecting an 800Mbps device or 800Mbps computer port.
The 6 pin carries data and draws power from the FireWire bus.
The 4-pin cable is used to carry data only, it does not draw power from the FireWire bus. It's also called iLink.

	6-pin to 6-pin cable. This cable supplies power to the FireWire bus for devices like small hard drives that cam run on bus power. Most commonly Firewire/1394 devices such as FireWire Hard Drives, FireWire CDRW, DVD and other common 1394 computer peripherals use this kind of cable connector, and most computers and PCI cards have the same standard 6-pin connector.
	6-pin to 4-pin cable. This cable does NOT supply power to the FireWire bus and is usually used to connect to DV Cameras or other self powered devices to a standard 6-pin computer connection. Some Windows computers will have a 4pin "I.Link" connector, especially on certain laptops, and if so you need a 6/4 cable to connect standard Firewire devices to this type of computer.
	4pin-4pin cable. Used to connect 4pin iLink devices (almost always video cameras) to other iLink devices or to computers (Sony and a few other Windows computers) using the 4pin iLINK ports.

Recommended Cable Lengths for Firewire

The recommended maximum cable length for connecting device to device with a 400Mbps cable is 4.5-meters (14.85ft). After which repeaters should be used.