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.

Comments

Chromecast

[MilliwaysPub886]

I really do like my Chromecast. Even if it is powered by Google. This device definitely has an uphill battle ahead of it.

Re:Chromecast

[CastrTroy]

I can see the appeal if you have a "dumb-tv". I bought a "smart TV", and found that I don't need any additional dongles hanging out of my TV taking up HDMI slots. I can play videos or display the screen directly from the tablet or notebook, play videos files off my Plex server, watch Netflix, all directly from the TV. I handn't really planned on getting a Smart TV, but all the TVs that were the size I wanted, with the features I wanted also happened to be smart TVs, or weren't any cheaper than the smart TVs.

Re:Chromecast

[chaosdivine69]

I'll see your "smart TV" and raise you a "3D TV".

I have both features in my TV and I use neither of them - well, besides the built in Netflix app. Anyhow, I admit I fell for the hype, call me gullible. I have watched a grand total of 0 3D Blu Rays even though I own a 3D Blu Ray player and an unopened copy of Avatar 3D. The player is still in the box after a whole year. I hope it works because I think the warranty is about to expire in December. I don't buy Blu Rays since they're way more expensive than DVD and since Netflix came along, I don't really need to go on a wild goose chase to find a still operational rental store either. Too bad Netflix doesn't offer 3D capabilities on some of its titles. I might actually use the 4 pairs of stupid looking glasses that came with it.

For a real smart TV experience I connect my desktop computer to the big screen via HDMI cable and sit back with a wireless keyboard with built in touchpad. Now THAT'S a smart TV experience considering I can do everything and anything I desire with that kind of setup.

Moral of my story: If you can save a few bucks on a dumb TV then I'd seriously suggest you consider it. Connect your laptop or desktop to it via HDMI and go nuts if you really want a satisfactory experience.

Re:Chromecast

[Whorhay]

This is of interest for me exactly because it isn't locked to using Chrome. I've only ever used Chrome when I was trying to establish if a website's functionality was just broke or if it was a Firefox problem.

Not sure how well it will work

[randomErr]

ChromeCast isn't exactly setting the world on fire. I have one. But the apps for it are same as what I can get on XBox and tablet. I really only use it when I want watch stupid cat videos on our TV because her tablet is better then XBox's YouTube interface.

The only saving grace for this unit is the open nature that ChromeCast really doesn't have yet.

Re:Not sure how well it will work

[Mr D from 63]

The only saving grace for this unit is the open nature that ChromeCast really doesn't have yet.

True. It would be nice to be able to have VLC type playback capabilities.

Re:Not sure how well it will work

[Anonymous Coward]

I this and love it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-google-ch/cnciopoikihiagdjbjpnocolokfelagl?hl=en

You're welcome.

Re:Not sure how well it will work

[nblender]

Agreed. Sometimes my CC doesn't show up. Caveat: I'm using my CC with Plex. So in addition to it not showing up, sometimes the video freezes and I need to reboot the CC....

But my biggest beef is that the CC is useless when my internet connection goes down. So is Plex though so I'm doubly hosed... But when my internet connection is down, I'm more likely to want to just switch on the TV...

I might have to go back to XBMC running on a PC and all of its annoyances..

no $12 deal for you

[frovingslosh]

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.

Proprietary firmware blob?

[Hobart]

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.

what brand smart TV?

[frovingslosh]

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).

Re:what brand smart TV?

[mattack2]

Do you mean new apps being added to _existing_ TVs? If so, how many years back do they support? i.e. for how many years do you get upgrades?

Re:what brand smart TV?

[CastrTroy]

More than the 6 months of updates I got from the Android phone I bought. Phone was released. 6 months later, Android 4 came out. My phone never got the update. So no, I wouldn't really expect that Chromecast would get apps any more than my phone. Sure my phone wasn't a Nexus phone, which is apparently the only way to really be somewhat sure that you will get updates at all, but it does have "with Google TM" engraved on the back so I half blame Google for allowing their name to be used a product with basically no support. I'm not sure how long my TV will continue to receive updates. But in the world of embedded products, I see very little updates from almost all the participants. So perhaps my TV won't get updates for long. But I wouldn't expect that from other devices either.

Graphics appear to be closed/proprietary.

[Hobart]

The Rockchip 3066 appears to use ARM's proprietary Mali T-series graphics. No, thanks.

Quote from the dev lead on the Mali graphics:

"I really do understand your frustration and I'm sorry that this makes life harder for you and similar developers. We are genuinely not against Open Source, as I hope I've tried to explain. I myself spent a long time working on the Linux kernel in the past and I wish I could give you a simple answer. Unfortunately, it is a genuinely complex problem, with a lot of trade-offs and judgements to be made as well as economic and legal issues. Ultimately I cannot easily reduce this to an answer here, and probably not to one that will satisfy you. Rest assured that you are not being ignored. However, as a relatively small company with a business model that is Partner driven, the resources that we have, need to be applied to projects in ways that meet Partner requirements."
—(2014-09) ARM Still Not Doing Open Drivers

Re:Graphics appear to be closed/proprietary.

[Hobart]

From the Matchstick SDK download agreement: (abridged)

4. Restrictions. You agree not to exploit ... content provided to you as a Registered Matchstick Developer, in any unauthorized way ... other than for authorized purposes. Copyright and other intellectual property laws protect ... content provided to you, and you agree to abide by and maintain all notices, license information, and restrictions contained therein. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of any software or software components of the Matchstick software including the Matchstick SDK software.

"Open Source Hardware" ?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. — Inigo Montoya