[HH] Matchstick: $12 TV stick running Firefox OS

[Jon Evans]

Just like the Chromecast, and your laptop, and really anything that streams
video over Wifi, the video is streamed in compressed form and then
decompressed for playback on the device.

For example if you tell it "stream this 1080p video from youtube", you are
not actually decoding the 1080p video as it would appear on HDMI and then
sending it to the device, rather you are sending a short message to the
device saying "go grab this video from youtube and play it".  The
decode/render/scale happens on the device before it hits the HDMI port.

On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Tariq Bashir Ahmad <tariq.bashir at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Great.
>
> But i am little skeptical about streaming video over wifi. HDMI's data
> rates are huge. I don't think wifi can cope up with HDMI.
>
> What do you guys think?
>
> -Tariq
>
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Tom Metro <tmetro+hhacking at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> We've seen many dozens of thumb-drive-sized stick computers that attach
>> to a TV to make your TV "smart" (stream content from the Internet).
>> Almost all have ran Android. Here's the first one running Firefox OS,
>> Mozilla's mobile operating system also based on Linux:
>>
>>
>> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matchstick/matchstick-the-streaming-stick-built-on-firefox-os
>>
>> They say it'll retail for $25, but you can buy-in to it now for a mere
>> $12...oh, wait, that was the early bird price that has sold out. Current
>> tier is $18. They've also sold out of "developer" units (prototypes
>> delivered in November) at $24 each. (They've already exceeded their
>> $100K goal by over 100%.)
>>
>> They expect to ship in February. If this is the first TV project for
>> Firefox OS, that might be overly optimistic, as there will be a lot of
>> UI to build and TV-oriented apps. And that's assuming the hardware
>> development is borrowing heavily from an existing or reference design.
>> (Actually they say, "Hardware is done! It was actually previewed in
>> June.")
>>
>> As for the software they say:
>>
>>   There are already hundreds of apps in the Mozilla app store, and as
>>   the developer program ramps up many of those apps and hundreds of new
>>   apps will become available on the Matchstick app store.
>>
>> And:
>>
>>   Matchstick currently is already binary compatible with a large number
>>   of existing Chromecast apps. ...apps...available at launch and
>>   include: Netflix, HBO Go, Pandora, ESPN, ABC, and many more.
>>
>>
>> They say the hardware and software will both be open:
>>
>>   Our goal was to make a streaming stick that was low cost, high design,
>>   and extremely adaptable without the walled garden for app developers
>>   that tends to slow progress. We also approached the hardware as a
>>   break even, open reference design, creating an app ecosystem where the
>>   app developers drive the economy. It's what Chromecast WANTED to be...
>>   =)
>>   ...
>>   No need to jailbreak your Matchstick, the door is wide open! ...we are
>>   making the reference designs and hardware schematics available for
>>   download. (http://www.matchstick.tv/developers/hardware.html) ... The
>>   files we provide are manufacturer ready, including board design,
>>   electrical layout, and the bill of materials.
>>
>> No mention of being powered via the HDMI port, as some sticks are.
>> Instead they have the usual (micro) USB port for power. (They address
>> this in an FAQ.)
>>
>> They describe the hardware as an upgrade compared to the Chromecast:
>>
>>   We selected the dual-core Rockchip 3066 processor, increased the
>>   onboard storage to 4GB, and dropped in 1GB of DDR3 memory. The bigger
>>   processor and increased memory gives you a much better video playback
>>   cache and increased performance for whatever games and custom overlays
>>   you might dream up.
>>
>>
>> They say you can "fling" content to it from apps and desktop web
>> browsers, which is similar to how you send content to a Chromecast, but
>> it is less clear whether the device will feature its own stand-alone UI
>> or be fully dependent on some other device to act as the controlling
>> interface, as is the case with a Chromecast.
>>
>> They talk about how developers can easily port Chromecast apps to it,
>> but I wasn't aware that apps ran on the Chromecast. I thought apps ran
>> on the controlling device, and just sent URLs and playback commands to
>> the Chromecast.
>>
>> They describe the software architecture here:
>> http://www.matchstick.tv/developers/documents/developers-guide.html
>>
>> and apparently in addition to the "sender" applications that run on the
>> controlling device, you can also customize things on the Matchstick
>> receiving side, where it has an engine capable of running HTML5
>> applications.
>>
>>  -Tom
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>
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