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In the sea of televisions, almost all smart today and almost always offering UHD resolution, Philips devices have had a unique selling point for many years: Ambilight. The term refers to the LED strips placed on the sides of the devices, which glow in appropriate colors to match what is currently happening on the screen and thus illuminate the wall behind the TV. The effect makes the picture larger and makes it easier on the eyes because a smooth transition is created between the TV picture and the wall.
Since Philips is the only manufacturer that can offer Ambilight, fans of this technology have always had to buy Philips TVs. Anyone who opted for a device from another manufacturer had to forgo the effect of flashing lights, until a retrofit solution hit the market in Autumn 2019.
When I tried the retrofit set at the time, I was not very keen on the system – the lamps provided by Philips to place the TV behind the TV only inaccurately reflected the color of the TV picture, with a significant and spatially limited delay, the system suffered in software problems. With a cost of nearly 400 euros for basic equipment, you couldn’t recommend anyone to buy this Ambilight imitation.
A year later, the company promises to use the system with the new Philips Hue Play Gradient light strip be greatly improved. Reason enough to give it a second chance with the new version.
However, the Play HDMI Sync Box remained a basic requirement. The small black box contains the electronics that connect the TV to networked Philips Hue lamps. The box is connected between external playback devices such as set-top boxes, game consoles and Blu-ray players, and the TV. It accepts signals from external devices via its four HDMI inputs and forwards them to the TV, even via HDMI.
This is precisely one of the weaknesses of the system: the box can only process what is fed into the TV from the outside. If you watch the normal TV program on the built-in tuner of the TV, the box cannot be used.
In principle, any colored lamp from the Philips Hue range can therefore be used to illuminate the room synchronously with the colors of the TV picture. But this only provides a rough reproduction of the play of colors on the TV screen. The new gradient light strips, on the other hand, are expected to achieve a similar lighting effect to the LED strips in Philips TVs.
Gradient Lightstrip installed
Photo: Matthias Kremp / DER SPIEGEL
The subtle difference: the gradient light strips are not installed, but are glued to the back of the TV using special brackets. Philips offers plastic tubes with a large number of LEDs in three dimensions for 55, 65 and 75 inch televisions. The smaller model also fits quite well on my 49-inch TV, although its simple design back with the glued-on LED tube doesn’t look as stylish as it used to.
But the effect is even more impressive. In fact, the LEDs light up perfectly in sync with what is happening on the screen in the right colors and thus illuminate the wall or the room behind my TV like a big screen. The result can hardly be distinguished from what an integrated Ambilight does. With the subtle difference that I always have to turn on the box using the smartphone app which is a bit annoying.
Everything is so colorful here
Photo: Matthias Kremp / DER SPIEGEL
But once the system is up and running, it’s fun too. Not so much with space works and horror movies, which are usually obscure. But whenever light is involved, the television environment seems to become part of the film. This is especially true of nature documentaries. The annoying bugs that plagued the system a year ago are nowhere to be seen; the Sync Box software has apparently received updates in the meantime.
Conclusion
However, there have been no price updates. As fun as it is to upgrade a TV with Sync Box and Gradient Lightstrip from Philips to an Ambilight home theater, it’s also expensive. With prices from 180 to 230 euros – depending on the size – the light strips themselves are not a bargain at all. Then there is the sync box, for which you have to calculate another 250 euros. And if you don’t use Hue lamps at home yet, you also need a so-called Hue Bridge, which costs 60 euros individually.
This quickly translates into total costs of up to 540 euros, which are at best useful if you want to upgrade a very high quality, i.e. expensive, TV. If not, it would be advisable to wait for the next TV purchase and then get a device with integrated Ambilight.
Background: product testing in the Netzwelt department
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