Matchstick cancels Chromecast competitor with Firefox OS release

The Matchstick company has canceled the release of its eponymous product, an HDMI stick with Firefox OS to stream video to TVs. Problems with video’s DRM would cause the stick not to release.

The company reports this in an email to people who had backed the project on Kickstarter, Variety writes. “The continued development of drm, despite a good start, will be a long and difficult road,” the developers said in the email. “We have to come to the conclusion that we can’t predict when we’ll be done with that.” Backers get their money back.

The cancellation of the project comes out of the blue. Earlier delays were due to the integration of new hardware into the product. For example, Matchtstick replaced the dual-core soc with a quad-core and the reception of WiFi had to be better compared to the first version.

In terms of functionality, the Matchstick is comparable to Google’s Chromecast and was announced in September last year. The device was soon funded with a Kickstarter campaign. Mozilla contributes to the software with Firefox OS.