Matchstick, an open hardware and software dongle, an alternative to streaming products, is no more. Matchstick is closing down and refunding its backers’ money.
Firefox OS-powered TV Adapter, Matchstick is dead. Matchstick was intended to be Chromecast rival but after headaches with Firefox DRM proved insurmountable, it is no more. Matchstick raised money on Kickstarter to build a Firefox OS-based open alternative to Google Chromecast. Now, the company confirms that it will offer refunds after failing to overcome the hurdles in manufacturing the product.
The team behind HDMI media-streaming stick announced that it has decided to cancel the unreleased product and refund all the money raised in successful Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was started in September 2014 and was highly successful, raising $470,310. In the campaign, Matchstick team described it as It’s what Chromecast WANTED to be. Then, the team announced a delay in product around its original shipment date in February. And now, Matchstick has announced via Kickstarter update that it has cancelled $25 Firefox OS-based HDMI dongle.
It was undoubtedly an ambitious project and Matchstick was to support streaming content stored locally – either on a smartphone, laptop or network-attached drive or in the cloud. The device was originally expected to ship in February at a retail price of $25, but the developers announced delays to make improvement to the hardware such as beefing up device’s power with a bigger processor etc. The team also said that DRM was becoming a challenging issue for them.
Matchstick said in a blog post, “Unfortunately, we are unable to continue on this journey, and we will be refunding all Matchstick pledges.” “After struggling with the DRM development based on Firefox OS for most of this year, we realize continued development of DRM, though showing early signs of promise, will be a long and difficult road. We have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to reliably predict the completion date of the DRM development without significantly more research, development and integration.”
The company said that it would be refunding 100% of the money pledged on Kickstarter, and may take up to 60 days to complete.
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