Matchstick's Firefox OS-based TV dongle is dead
Bad news if you backed Matchstick's crowdfunded, Firefox OS-powered TV adapter: it's not going to happen. The team has cancelled its would-be Chromecast rival after realizing that implementing copyright protection will require "significantly more" work than expected. It wouldn't be fair to leave people hanging when there's no way to "reliably predict" when you could play Netflix or other locked-down content, the company says. If you plunked money down, you should be getting a full refund within the next 60 days.
The move is unfortunate if you were looking for an affordable, more flexible alternative to the media sticks on store shelves, but it isn't surprising. Like many of these dongles, the Matchstick was going to live or die based on the services you could access -- its openness was great for tinkering, but that wasn't going to matter if you couldn't sit down and watch Orange is the New Black. The one consolation is that Matchstick's efforts likely furthered web technology, however briefly.
