This article is more than 1 year old

Mozilla dev dangles Chromecast clone dongle

Firefox OS clone would bring video from phones and browsers to your telly

Mozilla Developer Network principal developer evangelist Christian Heilmann has popped out a tweet mentioning an effort to clone Google's Chromecast dongle, but with Firefox OS under the hood.

Chromecast is a minimalist Android computer that offers WiFi and an HDMI plug. The WiFi sucks video out of devices running Google's Chrome browser, the HDMI plug shoots it into a television rather more elegantly than is the case with either cables or the perennially-flaky DLNA. The result is a handy way to send a device's screen to a larger display.

News of a Firefox OS-based competitor came when Heilmann fluttered out the tweet below.

Mozilla has since told other media this is a wildcat effort that is using Firefox OS but isn't an official capital P Project.

It's not hard to see why Mozilla could at least sanction the effort: the organisation’s commitment to an open web makes a device that sends video from either HTML5 pages or phones running Firefox OS to larger displays a nice-to-have.

What Mozilla lacks is commercial motivation. Chromecast makes sense as a way for Google to make its Play store more attractive to users because there's only so much telly one can watch on even a big fondleslab before pining for a way to send it to a larger screen. By making the Chromecast available at a very reasonable price - $US35, $AUD50 and £30 – Google gives itself the chance of scooping years worth of commissions from its content partners.

Mozilla's never shown much interest in building a content store, so doesn't have that motivation. Little wonder this appears not to be an official project. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like