1171698 - (Chromecast) Add Casting (Chromecast) Capabilities to Desktop

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Alex Davis [:adavis]]

Casting is a very popular feature in Chrome. Many devices support it 17M Chromecasts sold and over 10M Rokus (US only).

We need to add support to Firefox desktop (Mac, Win, Linux). Let's remove a major reason for switching back to Chrome. It will also reduce friction with adopting FX. (Casting already supported by FX Android and FX OS)

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I think I recall that we had this feature for a short time, but it was disabled due to how we would periodically scan the network for casting devices.

See bug 1142521 for context.

Comment 2

[Alex Davis [:adavis]]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) - Needinfo me! from comment #1)
> I think I recall that we had this feature for a short time, but it was
> disabled due to how we would periodically scan the network for casting
> devices.
> 
> See bug 1142521 for context.

Thanks. Seems like a silly reason. It's a valuable feature. A toggle should have just been added or power users should just disable it in configs.

I'll inquire in the other bug.

Comment 3

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola Alex!

As a Roku owner, I'd like to see this making a come back so I'm throwing points at this bug assuming points mean how bad I want a bug to be fixed =)

¡Gracias!
Alex
Ps: Please do enlighten me if I'm in fact using "Points:" incorrectly.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Please don't change the points field. Thank you.

Comment 5

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to alex_mayorga from comment #3)
> Ps: Please do enlighten me if I'm in fact using "Points:" incorrectly.

The points field is used as a measure to estimate the difficulty of fixing a bug. A bug with 13 points has been determined to be a very difficult bug to fix (both in terms of time and complexity).

Comment 6

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola Jared!

Thanks for enlightening me.

Per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1142521#c29 browser.casting.enabled;true does the trick for now.

Leaving the breadcrumb here FWIW...

¡Gracias!
Alex

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

alex, please stop messing with flags. They are used for tracking work.

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Alex Davis [:adavis] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) - Needinfo me! from comment #1)
> > I think I recall that we had this feature for a short time, but it was
> > disabled due to how we would periodically scan the network for casting
> > devices.
> > 
> > See bug 1142521 for context.
> 
> Thanks. Seems like a silly reason.

You think firewall prompts on Windows for every user is a silly reason to disable a feature that would only be used by a fraction of our users?

> It's a valuable feature. A toggle should
> have just been added or power users should just disable it in configs.

We did, but that doesn't help with general adoption.

If you care about this feature, a good way to get this to move forward is to figure out if/how Chrome avoids doing this and still supporting devices.

Comment 9

[Alex Davis [:adavis]]

Currently, >415 million television are connected to the Internet. The majority of those support casting (since Apple TV usage is just 17% market share). This is not just a "fraction of users" as you mention because "20 percent of households with a broadband connection own at least one such device". *See sources below

I would love to help you figure out if/how Chrome avoids this but I am not technical. I am more of a marketer and product manager. This why I'm recommending we look into fixing it.

You mention that it didn't help with general adoption. Do you have numbers to share? Did you look into how it impacted retention by running a funnelcake? Please share this analysis or the bugs concluding this so I can understand your results.

We already support casting on Android so I don't see why we wouldn't do it on desktop too.

On a personal note, it's the primary reason I still use Chrome and the main reason why many of my friends and family members don't use Firefox.

Sources:
https://www.digitaltvresearch.com/products/product?id=127
http://www.statista.com/statistics/247160/forecast-of-the-number-of-connected-tv-sets-worldwide/
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/08/20/apple-tv-sales-slip-to-fourth-place-in-us-streaming-device-market-study-says

Comment 10

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Alex Davis [:adavis] from comment #9)
> Currently, >415 million television are connected to the Internet. The
> majority of those support casting (since Apple TV usage is just 17% market
> share). This is not just a "fraction of users" as you mention because "20
> percent of households with a broadband connection own at least one such
> device". *See sources below

That's still upwards of 90% of people who would be on their desktop/laptop machine and not use this - and I'm being generous in suggesting half of the people using such devices would (a) *want* to cast content from their desktop/laptop machine, and (b) have the additional devices (chromecast/roku/whatever) to support that - not just the TV. The usecase is much less compelling than it is for mobile, where the screen is so much smaller than it is on desktop/laptop devices, and the numbers for chromecast/roku are much smaller than just the number of internet-connected TVs.

> You mention that it didn't help with general adoption.

No, I meant, you can turn this on today in Firefox by going to about:config and flipping the relevant pref (see comment 6). But very few people know this and/or find the SUMO article to do this. I don't have data, but...

> On a personal note, it's the primary reason I still use Chrome and the main
> reason why many of my friends and family members don't use Firefox.

... the fact that apparently our own employees don't manage it sure seems to support my hypothesis that few people find out how to use this! (though the plural of anecdotes isn't data...)


> Do you have numbers
> to share? Did you look into how it impacted retention by running a
> funnelcake?

No. I'm an engineer, I don't get to decide what funnelcakes we run.

> Please share this analysis or the bugs concluding this so I can
> understand your results.

I'm actually not really sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that the mere presence of the casting functionality would increase retention, moreso than the nuisance/firewall prompts would reduce it? Given the numbers you gave, that seems... highly unlikely. Especially since casting isn't the primary usecase for a web browser today, even for those who do use that functionality.

Several duplicate bugs were filed about the firewall prompt and/or the spurious attempts to use SSDP and friends. We know that increasing the number of prompts in the install path impacts "funnel success". I wouldn't mind us running a funnelcake, but in the absence of data, previous experience and the data we already have would suggest the impact wouldn't be positive, and I'm not sure it's worth running a funnelcake to confirm that in the absence of compelling arguments to the contrary.

> We already support casting on Android so I don't see why we wouldn't do it
> on desktop too.

Doing this on Android doesn't get you firewall prompts on the device. There is almost no negative on Android. Whereas desktop users, as noted earlier, need additional hardware and do get firewall prompts - so lots more negatives. This is why the trade-off is different.


Just so we're clear, if we can find a way for this to not do SSDP and/or give you firewall prompts when you're not using this and/or not even able to use it, ie to reduce the negative impact for non-users, then I see no reason not to ship this default-enabled. But we do need to fix the negatives, and that's going to require investigating if/how that is possible, and then putting in the engineering work to do it. If you want that to happen, and can't do it yourself, post to firefox-dev ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/firefox-dev ) and make a case for prioritizing this (over, y'know, the mountain of other things that we'd like to be doing).

Comment 11

[Alex Davis [:adavis]]

Thanks for your thorough response. It is really appreciated and clarifies a lot. I apologize if I was a bit abrupt yesterday.

I wish I had the technical knowledge to help resolve the SSDP problem.

Thanks for the recommendations. I will look into it.

Comment 12

[Roman Valls Guimera]

(In reply to alex_mayorga from comment #6)
> ¡Hola Jared!
> 
> Thanks for enlightening me.
> 
> Per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1142521#c29
> browser.casting.enabled;true does the trick for now.
> 
> Leaving the breadcrumb here FWIW...
> 
> ¡Gracias!
> Alex

Alex, how did that work 2 years ago? Did you see the casting icon on youtube or in any part of the bar? Doesn't seem to work on Firefox Nightly even when activating the option in about:config.

Can you give it another try and confirm? Thanks!

Comment 13

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola Roman!

The preference doesn't seem to exist anymore I created it manually on Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0 ID:20171009100134 and it doesn't seem to have an effect.

Updating flags accordingly.

¡Gracias!
Alex

Comment 14

[Roman Valls Guimera]

A quick search at Mozilla's DXR reveals that it only seems to be present on mobile/android ATM:

https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/chrome/content/CastingApps.js

Comment 15

[jokeyrhyme]

I may be imagining things, but I dimly recall a firewall prompt on Windows 10 with Firefox 60-something

If we're doing this for some other feature, does it not lessen the user experience impact that previously blocked the Chromecast feature work?

Comment 16

[Richard von Moltke Necochea]

I don't know if this can help
https://hensm.github.io/fx_cast/

Comment 17

[Asif Youssuff]

Gijs, Is this the right component?

Comment 18

[:Gijs (he/him)]

fx::general is probably more accurate.

Comment 19

[adomingo]

Besides Chromecast support it would be interesting to add DLNA support, so much more devices would benefit. For instance, other open source projects implement DLNA like:

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://github.com/UniversalMediaServer/UniversalMediaServer
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/PipeCast

Comment 20

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

A Firefox extension that implements partial support for the Google Cast SDK:

https://hensm.github.io/fx_cast/

Comment 21

[Dr. Reinhard Freund]

I want to add some facts, why mediacasting ability has become very urgent to Firefox:

• Youtube has announced to shut down pairing via TV-code (see https://www.youtube.com/pair). That was the only way to cast videos from Desktop-Firefox (Windows) to DLNA-TVs. In near future you have to use Google Chrome or MS Edge with Chromium Engine to do this.
• The support for DLNA is even more important than for Chromecast. In contrast to the proprietary Chromecast, nearly every modern TV or blueray player is DLNA enabled. By the way, fx_cast only seems to work with Chromecast (DLNA-TVs are not found) and after years it is still a buggy beta version.
• In times when different devices grow more and more together, it has become a well-established method to cast online videos from PC or laptop not only to a big TV-screen, but also to a connected hi-fi system. It is not the only but an important job of a browser to make that possible. Otherwise people will use a browser that makes it possible.

Comment 22

[Yajo]

Actually it's the only reason why chrome is installed on my phone.

Comment 23

[dev]

It would be awesome if this can be done. Maybe a small portion of users, but it will quite be a significant feature, also will increase the user base.

Comment 24

[Sylvain Paré]

This should be available for both audio and video as for the request https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1171706