Is the world big enough for another streaming Internet dongle? Mozilla and Matchstick sure hope so, as they announce the first Firefox OS device that's not a smartphone.
Firecast? Foxcast? Firefox Dongle? Actually, Matchstick will be the name of the Firefox OS open-source take on the Chromecast. The Matchstick streaming Internet and media dongle will be available first through a Kickstarter project, Mozilla and Matchstick announced on Tuesday.
Originally reported last June to be in the works, the Matchstick dongle is an HDMI-streaming stick similar in shape and nearly identical in function to the Chromecast. However, it runs on Firefox OS, the open source mobile operating system built by Mozilla on Firefox's underlying engine. It's the first Firefox OS-powered device that's not a smartphone.
Both the hardware and software for Matchstick are open source, and it's available today through Kickstarter on a tiered pre-order system. Through the promotional material, it appears the Matchstick will be available in black or white, although that hasn't been confirmed by Matchstick.
Jack Chang, the US general manager of Matchstick and the chief operating officer of its sister company 9x9tv, which makes apps for televisions and is also known as Flipr, said that developer interest in Matchstick will drive consumer adoption.
"Due to Matchstick's unique openness, we believe it will lead to a greater number of cool apps and lower price. These are tangible benefits a consumer will readily embrace," he told CNET. Matchstick has its headquarters in San Jose, Calif., with an engineering team located in Beijing, China.
Chang said that people will be able to use Matchstick to not only stream video and audio to their TVs from the Internet, but a more full Web experience that includes online shopping, voting, and participating in in surveys.
"The possibilities are endless," he said. The Matchstick, which calls the process by which apps are sent to the receiver dongle Flinging, will work with Android, iOS, Firefox, and Chrome.
The Matchstick starts at $12 for the first 500 consumers who pre-order through the Kickstarter, to be delivered in January 2015. An unlimited number of consumers will be able to pre-order the Matchstick for $18, also to be delivered in January.
If you miss the Kickstarter window, you'll be able to buy one retail for $25, $10 cheaper than a Chromecast, at some point after the pre-orders have been shipped. Neither Mozilla nor Matchstick confirm at the time of writing whether the dongle would be available in retail stores, or online only.
"This is exactly what Firefox was and is built for," said Mozilla's Chris Lee, the Firefox OS director of product. He added that Mozilla didn't have to make any changes to Firefox OS to get it to work with the Matchstick hardware.
The Matchstick dongle is so similar to the Chromecast that its makers are making a central part of their pitch to developers that it's the anti-Chromecast.
"It's better than Chromecast," extols the promo video on the Kickstarter page, which humorously shows Matchstick testers getting thrown out of an Ikea furniture store for using the Ikea living room sets to test the Matchstick -- and asks for money so they can "shoot a real commercial."
As for other competitors, Chang dismissed the idea that the Matchstick will have to compete with Roku's streaming media stick.
"There is no 'casting' capability in a Roku dongle," he said. "A Roku dongle is essentially a Roku box packed into a USB stick."
But for most consumers, what matters most is seeing their favorite services supported. And that's not a done deal for Matchstick.
Matchstick's appeal for apps
Matchstick and Mozilla are going to great lengths to get developers on board with their new dongle, which is essential given that they're going up against Google's popular Chromecast. A developer giveaway program will deliver around 300 Matchstick prototypes to app developers, Chang said, and will be followed by a developer event in November at Mozilla's San Francisco office.
Up to another 250 developers can order a prototype through the Kickstarter for a minimum pledge of $24 to be shipped in November, two months before everybody else can get one. It includes early access to the Matchstick Software Development Kit and Application Programming Interfaces required to build apps for the dongle, and Matchstick developer support.
Most existing Chromecast apps, Chang said, should take about an hour to recompile for the Matchstick. Matchstick is fully compatible with all Chromecast 1.0 apps, such as YouTube, Photowall, and This Week in Tech, and code compatible with Chromecast 2.0 apps, which means that developers can recompile the app after changing "only a few lines of code," said the Kickstarter page.
Matchstick is built on a dual-core Rockchip 3066 processor, has 4 gigabytes of onboard storage, 1 gigabyte of DDR3 memory, and supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. The Kickstarter page claims that this is better hardware than the Chromecast to ensure better video playback and game support, although the open nature of the Matchstick schematics means that if you have the technical background, you can roll your own Matchstick.
On its Kickstarter page, Matchstick promises that it will have major content partners lined up by the time the dongle is shipped to consumers in January. Chief among them is Netflix, which makes up around one-third of all North American Internet traffic by some metrics.
Although Chang did not respond directly to a question about Netflix support, the Netflix logo appears three times in the same Matchstick promotional image for supported services, the only one to do so. If Matchstick isn't talking to Netflix yet, they ought to be.
"We got this!" the Kickstarter description cheers coming support for existing, popular streaming media services.
Given that Chang promises it will be easy for developers to adapt apps with existing Chromecast support to the Matchstick, for his sake he better be right or consumers won't care.
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