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Matchstick and Mozilla Take On Google's Chromecast With $25 Firefox OS Dongle
An anonymous reader writes Matchstick and Mozilla today announced their open-source take on the Chromecast: a $25 Firefox OS-powered HDMI dongle. The streaming Internet and media stick will be available first through Kickstarter, in the hopes to drive down the price tag. Jack Chang, Matchstick General Manager in the US, described the device to me as "essentially an open Chromecast." He explained that while the MSRP is $25 (Google's Chromecast retails for $35), the Kickstarter campaign is offering a regular price of $18, and an early bird price of $12.
I really do like my Chromecast. Even if it is powered by Google. This device definitely has an uphill battle ahead of it.
The only saving grace for this unit is the open nature that ChromeCast really doesn't have yet.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
It would have been nice if this had been posted before all of the $12 devices were spoken for. I went to the site as soon as this was posted but all 500 were taken.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The deal under which Mozilla makes about $300 million a year putting Google as the default browser in Firefox is ending in November of this year. This deal provides the vast majority of Mozilla's funding. Does Google need to renew it? The situation has changed from 4 years ago - Chrome is the default on Android, People are installing it on their laptops to have the same browser as their phones, etc.
So maybe Mozilla can see the writing on the wall and doesn't care to "offend" Google any more. Making the Firefox phone OS, and now competing with Google Chromecast ... and on tablets, desktops, and TVs. Because there aren't already others competing for the bottom 0.01% of users in any of those spaces (hello, Canonical).
Because really, if Google doesn't renew the deal, or renews it a a much lower price, there's going to be a lot of pain and suffering at Mozilla. And if Mozilla signs with Microsoft instead, how quickly do you think people would put their default search back to Google? Microsoft knows that, so they're not going to be willing to pay big bucks either for a browser that has lost half it's market share and that most FF users will quickly switch back to Google for their default search engine.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
From the Kickstarter page, the computer they are trying to fund is going to be based around a Rockchip 3066 SoC.
Will this have the same proprietary blob required to function / use video like the various Broadcom (Videocore in Raspberry Pi) / Marvell chips are stuck with?
If so, it's not actually Free/Open hardware, because that mystery embedded RTOS can do anything to my system at any time. If Mozilla and/or Matchstick are working with Rockchip (or whomever Rockchip licenses their cores from) to fully document the toolchain, I'd be delighted. (I'm not holding my breath.)
I don't just want a Free and open-source graphics device driver, I want the full documented toolchain for everything on the chip.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Why would they give me money as a reward for funding them with money?
They give you a $200 per diem at CES. But.. why not just make the reward level that much cheaper? I don't get it.
You might want to be more specific about your brand of smart TV. I got an LG and the Plex support is awful (even though Plex claims LG is a supported brand). Some stuff would play OK when it was encoded in something that was native for the LG, but transcoding just didn't work right. I ended up switching from Plex to the open sores Universal Media Player and that is at least working with transcoding. Clunky interface and slow to respond sometimes, but at least I can watch stuff that I couldn't watch with Plex.
I think the bottom line here is that there is a lot of variety between the various options. In my opinion the Roku 3 is probably the top end, and the "Smart TVs" are likely at the bottom of the list. The hope for this device is that it will be open and not go out of its way to prevent useful things from being done with it like Chrome cast did when they stopped many early apps from working. And I doubt that you are seeing may apps or channels being added for your "Smart TV" (I'm sure not).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Consider a Raspberry Pi B+. You can add IR (or bluetooth), it's full HD, has four USB so you can add WiFi and other stuff, has a camera interface, there's a media player configuration to fool with right out of the (NOOBS) box, Youtube et al are all available over the web, etc... and it's pretty easy to move, too. HDMI cable, power supply, that's all. Presuming you've an IR or bluetooth remote working with it.
And it's all about as open -- hardware and software -- as most stuff tends to get, which is handy if you want to get all hammer and tongs on it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Rockchip 3066 appears to use ARM's proprietary Mali T-series graphics. No, thanks.
Quote from the dev lead on the Mali graphics:
o/~ Join us now and share the software
I really don't understand what this stuff (either Matchstick or Chromecast) is good for. Why don't you plug your HTPC into the TV? Are these things for oddly-shaped rooms where people just have to have the computer and monitor on different sides, without a cable?
Someone please ELI5 me (that's the currently hip way to ask for explanations, I hear) WTF the use case is for wireless HDMI?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I have a cheap $18 dongle I bought off of Ebay. Seems to work well enough.
It is not even certified to work with Google's own Chromebooks.