Ever since Chromecast and Roku hit the market, rumor has said that Mozilla was working on a more open, tinkerer-friendly type of streaming dongle. This week, Mozilla developer Christian Heilmann tweeted a photo that sure looks like a nearly-finalized product, and GigaOM got to play with a prototype. Casting's about to get open-sourcey.


GigaOM's Janko Roettgers got an exclusive chance to play around with the Firefox OS-powered streaming device, and it seems like Mozilla's competitor offers many of the same capabilities as Chromecast and Roku. But unlike Chromecast, which restricts certain types of content and is only open to Android, iOS, and web app developers, Mozilla's system would assumedly be completely open to developers' whims.

That means Mozilla's device could offer casting capabilities to Windows Phones and Amazon Fire Phones. And it could offer hardware and software integration that's only limited by a hobbyist's imagination.


It's unclear when the as-yet-unnamed Mozilla streaming device will hit the market. When it does, it seems like it'll bring some hacker-friendly capabilities to the already highly competitive streaming arena. [GigaOM]

Image via Christian Heilmann