Devin Heitmueller [off-list ref] writes:

The other key thing I don't think we have given much thought to is the
fact that in many tuners, the hardware does RC decoding and just
returns NEC/RC5/RC6 codes.  And in many of those cases, the hardware
has to be configured to know what format to receive.  We probably need
some kernel API such that the hardware can tell lirc what formats are
supported, and another API call to tell the hardware which mode to
operate in.

For such cases, I wouldn't bother with lirc mode. Input layer + key
mapping with ioctl (probably improved), and lircd can grab events from
input layer if needed.
-- 
Krzysztof Halasa