Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box – Ambilight lighting for all TVs and home theaters

Text Teppo HirviKunnas Pictures Philips

The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box and compatible lights bring an impressive Ambilight lighting experience to movies and gaming.

Philips' Ambilight lighting has been available on Philips TVs for years. Praised and loved, but never really a hit. Perhaps due to its brand-specific nature.

This is a backlighting system developed by Philips, in which LED lights on the edges of the TV are synchronized with the content displayed on the screen. It projects colors and brightness onto the wall, expanding the visual experience of the image and creating an immersive atmosphere for watching movies, games and series. It brings atmospheric light to the room in synchronization with the content displayed on the screen.

Now Philips has taken this concept a step further, offering the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, which enables an Ambilight-like experience on any TV and home theater.

The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is a standalone device that does not require a Philips TV to work. The device is connected between the TV and HDMI sources, such as a game console, streaming device or set-top box. The device analyzes the image in real time and synchronizes the image signal with Philips Hue lights. This way, the lights change color and brightness according to events in the image, as if expanding the image and thus creating a more immersive and engaging viewing experience. And this really works.

The system supports the HDMI 2.1 standard, ensuring compatibility with the latest devices, such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The device allows for up to 8K content at a refresh rate of 60 Hz (8K version of the device) and 4K content at 120 Hz.

The system is controlled via the Philips Hue app, which offers a wide range of settings for lighting intensity, color tones and synchronization modes. The app also offers various preset modes: Movie mode creates a calm and atmospheric lighting for watching, while Game mode: reacts dynamically and quickly to the action on the screen. Music mode: synchronizes the lighting to the rhythm of music and creates an atmosphere for parties or relaxing.

The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box can be connected to up to ten separate compatible Hue lights. For our test, we used the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip, which is designed for 55-75-inch TVs. The strip attaches to the back of the TV and is controlled wirelessly.

The Sync Box offers a surprisingly impressive experience, but it's worth noting that it only works with content coming from HDMI sources to a TV (or projector). The device is connected between the image source and the TV (or projector). This means that content from the TV's own content sources, such as broadcast TV, Netflix or YouTube, cannot be synced to the Hue lights. The system therefore always requires an external content source, a Blu-ray player, a streaming device such as Chromecast or Apple TV, which are connected directly to the Sync Box.

The system isn't cheap either: the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box starts at 270 euros, the required Hub accessory starts at 60 euros, and compatible Philips Hue light strips start at 180 euros.