Swirl of colors on your TV

With the Play HDMI sync box, Philips Hue users can finally sync all their lights to their TV. One of the dreams of intelligent lighting is to be able to synchronize them with any movie or TV show you're watching to create a symphony of sounds and lights. However, for people equipped with Philips Hue smart lamps, the main application Hue Sync up to now was the Hue Sync application, which only worked on PCs or Macs, which meant that you often had to do tricky things, such as connecting a laptop to your TV. , or if you have a very long cord running over a nearby desk for everything to work properly.

But with the new Play HDMI sync box, Philips Hue finally offers users a way to easily harmonize their smart lights with the content of their television screens. The device itself is very simple. It's just a small four-port HDMI hub that connects to all your multimedia boxes: Apple TV, cable box, Roku box, Nvidia Shield, game console, and more.

From there, the Play Sync Box analyzes the visual data of any content you are watching, so you can simultaneously stream that video to your TV while controlling smart lights connected to your content.

The Play Sync Box can switch automatically between any of the four HDMI inputs depending on the device used. It supports HDMI CEC to allow you to control connected devices with a single remote control or with voice commands. It also supports HDMI 2.0 to avoid any problem of 4K HDR content at 60 fps or less.

With regard to lighting, the Play Sync Box can be associated with 10 different Philips Hue Color Ambience lights, while the standalone Hue Sync Mobile app allows you to adjust settings such as brightness, speed and the intensity of your lighting. That's a good thing, because even though I can not believe I'm saying that, when I saw a demonstration of the Play Sync Box in action, I found the setup a bit overwhelming when all the lights were on. explosion. It's also intense.

In addition, a small bonus that facilitates the installation of smart lighting around your TV: the AC adapter of the Play Sync Box includes a brick with two additional power outlets compatible Hue , allowing you to reduce the number of outlets in your lighting system. is hogging.

The downside is that at $ 230, the Play Sync synchronization box is not cheap. That's a good part of the change so that you can blink your smart lights and change color at the same time as what's on your TV. But if you wait all the time for Hue to install color synchronization in the living room, the Play Sync Box is.

The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box will be available at Best Buy stores beginning October 15.