Over the recent past few years, there was a big push in making normal high definition televisions into smart TV’s. This was successfully done through devices like the Google Chromecast, an HDMI dongle that could connect onto your local wireless network and bring out several applications and streaming services. While the Google Chromecast was a popular option to go through, a new company decided to bring out a similar dongle that would not only be cheaper than the Google Chromecast but also open sourced. This HDMI dongle was known as the Matchstick and it was successfully funded through Kickstarter, but after nearly a year since it was first announced and headed to development, the Mozilla team decided to cancel the entire project.
Within the month of September of 2014, Matchstick was revealed through Kickstarter. This HDMI dongle promised to deliver similar services and applications from dongles like the Google Chromecast but developed to allow open hardware and software. Not only was the device appealing to consumers for its Firefox OS but also for its cheap price tag of around $20. This particular Kickstarter had a goal was set for $100,000 in which 17,218 backers made the project a success with a pledged amount of over $400,000. Today an announcement was made through the Kickstarter project page that revealed the development team has decided to cancel the project before it officially completed and ready for market release. Within the announcement, the team revealed that the main reason the Matchstick is being canceled was within the DRM development.
“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.” If you were one of the pledged backers then you won’t have to worry about where your money went. Within the same update, the development team announced that all backers will be refunded any and all money given to the project. The refund process will be done through Amazon payment system in which the refunds can take up to the end of September to show up in your account.