Mozilla developing streaming stick in bid to compete with AirPlay and the Apple TV

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS0VUOfrycw]

Video gia GigaOm

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox web browser, is working on a stream stick set to directly compete with the Apple TV and other similar products, according to GigaOm. The device runs Mozilla’s own Firefox OS, originally designed for smartphones, and is apparently referred to as “Netcast” within the Firefox browser.

Unlike Apple’s current offering, the Netcast would allow developers to integrate the technology into applications on a wide variety of operating systems and hardware devices, including many platforms not currently supported by the Apple’s AirPlay feature. In a statement to GigaOm, Mozilla noted that anyone is welcome to work with Firefox OS and that hardware running that system does not necessarily have to come from that company.

The statement may seem like a thin denial aimed at possibly instilling the idea that a third party could be behind this project, and it’s certainly possible that some other company is responsible for the hardware side of things, but the software is certainly coming from inside the company, as indicated by the references in the browser.

Surprisingly, GigaOm reports that a prototype device acquired by that site (seen in the video above) is capable of working with certain Google Chromecast-enabled applications right out of the box.

There’s no indication yet of when we’ll see the “Netcast” or whatever it ends up being called as a publicly-available product, but the leaked prototype is said to point to some time in the near future.