Let us know where you land in the comments - and feel free to toss out movie or game suggestions you'd like to see us test. Some find it fun and immersive, some find it too distracting and others land in a meh middleground. It might make for a contentious movie night, though, as our team is somewhat split on the feature. That Hue Play approach is also the setup we'll probably use when we test the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box for ourselves at the CNET Smart Home. The Hue Play HDMI Box seems like an especially good fit with the color-changing Philips Hue Play light bars, seen here on either side of the TV.
I also wonder if Signify won't ultimately start selling Hue Entertainment starter kits that package the HDMI box with those Hue Play lights at a discount. That's a nice approach that might help free up some of the cord clutter behind your entertainment center. That means that you could use a single Hue Play plug to power an entry-level Hue Entertainment setup with two lights and the HDMI box. Signify tells me that the HDMI box is compatible with the same plug-in power supply as those Hue Play bars, with a plug that's designed to power up to three devices at once. It's no coincidence that those Hue Play lights share a name with the new Hue Play HDMI box. Fixtures you can hide behind or beside the TV are a good fit, too - most notably, the Philips Hue Play light bars, which can stand on their own or mount directly on the back of your TV. You can use any of Hue's color-changing lights with the feature, but the best bets are TV-friendly accent lights like the Philips Hue Light Strip. Signify says that the box doesn't store any information about what you watch, and adds that the Hue Play box supports simultaneous color-matching with up to 10 Hue lights at once.
HUE SYNC BOX FULL
From there, it'll automatically switch between those devices as you use them, with full support for 4K resolution and HDR10. Philips Hue parent company Signify says that you'll be able to adjust the brightness and the speed and intensity of the lighting effects, as well as your default preferences for each HDMI input.Īpart from the HDMI output that connects the device to your TV, each Hue Play box includes four HDMI inputs to sync it up with your streaming devices, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and DVR boxes.īy the way, there are four of those HDMI inputs on the back of the Hue Play box, which means you can sync your lights with up to four separate devices. Before, you'd set the feature up in the original Hue app, with somewhat limited controls for things like brightness and the position of your lights in relation to the screen. The arrival of a new, dedicated Hue Sync app marks another point of progress for Hue Entertainment.
HUE SYNC BOX PC
That's fine for PC gaming, but it forced you to connect your computer to your TV in order to enjoy the feature on a full-size screen from the comfort of your preferred spot on the living room couch, and it left things like gaming consoles out of the mix altogether.
HUE SYNC BOX SOFTWARE
Instead, users had to download Hue Sync software to their computer to match the lights with whatever was playing on their monitor or laptop screen. Now, you can sync your lights up with any device that connects to your TV via HDMI cable.Īll of that is a big step up from the original Hue Entertainment pitch, which didn't include the pass-through approach at all.
The original Hue Entertainment pitch forced you to connect your laptop to your TV in order to enjoy effects like this. From there, Hue reads the incoming video signal of whatever you're watching or playing and uses that data to quarterback color-matching smart lighting effects in real time, with virtually no lag.
You'll connect it to your TV, then take your media streamers, game consoles, set-top boxes and anything else that connects to your TV via HDMI and connect them to the Hue Play Box instead. Like the name suggests, Hue's new sync box is an HDMI pass-through device similar to the one we tested out with the DreamScreen 4K TV lighting kit.
HUE SYNC BOX UPGRADE
It's called the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, and it's a significant upgrade for the brand's Hue Entertainment feature - but at a preorder asking price of $230, it won't come cheap. Now, the brand's newest product wants to help you sync those color-changing smart lights with whatever's playing on your TV screen. The folks behind Philips Hue have already released a lot of new smart lights this year.
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