Philips Hue Play Hdmi Sync Box

Signify has steadily expanded its Hue line of smart lighting products to embrace the entire home, within and out. But while the ability to remotely control your lighting, including adjusting color, intensity and effulgence is bang-up, one of its more recent products focuses more on how to turn all those continued lights into a dynamic, at-home interactive entertainment experience. The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is a relatively simple device that sits between your video sources, including things like game consoles and the Apple Telly, and your television, enabling synced lite shows that can take advantage of a wide range of Hue products.

The basics

The Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is at its cadre an HDMI switcher, offer 4 HDMI inputs and a single HDMI output. Signals from your input devices (e.chiliad., Apple Television receiver, Roku, Xbox, PS4, etc.) go into the box and are passed through to the Tv, with switching happening automatically depending on which device was most recently active (y'all can also change them manually with the app and with vocalization controls).

The Sync Box supports a range of modern quality standards for brandish and audio. It supports 4K 60Hz resolution, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision standards, besides as Dolby Atmos surround audio. It besides supports HDMI 2.0b with HDCP 2.2 compliance for copyright protection.

Y'all will demand not just Hue colored lights, but as well a Hue Bridge (the 2nd-generation, rounded-square version) to ensure that the Hue Sync Box is more than than simply a particularly expensive HDMI hub, but information technology does that job very well, as well. If you lot practice have Hue products, similar the Hue Play low-cal bars that can easily mount on top of your TV stand up or to the dorsum of your Boob tube itself, or the Hue Signe multicolored floor or table lamps, then y'all tin can use the Sync companion app to ensure your lights reflect what's going on on screen — for any video that plays through the box from whatever source.

Image Credits: Philips

Design and operation

Why would y'all want this? Well, mostly considering it looks really, actually cool. Hue Sync has already been available equally a software feature for you lot to use with video played back on Macs and PCs when used in combination with a monitoring tool. But that has a lot of limitations, including not being able to work with official Netflix apps and Netflix in the browser. The Sync Box eliminates whatever potential roadblocks and also ways you can employ regular streaming and gaming sources without having to run a media center PC.

The box itself is relatively big, merely that seems similar it'south mostly to accommodate the multiple HDMI ports. It'south very short, despite being virtually twice the surface expanse of an Apple tree Telly, so it should be very easy to integrate into your existing habitation theatre setup, whatever that entails.

Setting upwardly the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is very piece of cake and requires only installing the app and pressing the sync button on your Hue Bridge when instructed to practise so. As mentioned, y'all tin can plug in upwards to 4 sources and the box will switch between them automatically when you apply an input device or you can besides manually modify the input (and rename them) using the app. The app also allows y'all to tweak the intensity, brightness and responsiveness of the light, making it more than subtle or more extreme, depending on your preferences and your activity. A "Game" setting, for instance, sets it to maximum intensity and responsiveness for a more dynamic effect conforming fast-paced interactive content.

Image Credits: Philips Hue

I plant that the lighting was extremely good at mimicking the colors and brightness of a scene, peculiarly if you lot take the time to accurately fix the position of your Hue lights for a defended "entertainment area" in the official main Hue app. It's an issue that, when used in its most subtle settings, tin basically fade abroad simply still provide 18-carat enhancement for the watching experience, making it feel more than immersive. At its maxed out settings, it's much more noticeable, but still something that basically fades away into the background over an extended period of use, in a good way.

Especially since the firmware update, the Hue Play Sync Box has proven a fantastic addition to my abode theater setup, providing an extra bit of flair to every TV watching experience. It'south plain more effective in dark rooms, just information technology really seems to especially complement loftier-quality OLED screens that produce vibrant colors and true, deep blacks.

Lesser line

The Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is a bit of an extravagance at $229.99, but it definitely adds to the overall dwelling TV-watching experience, for movies, streaming and for gaming. The four HDMI inputs hateful you can besides use it to add together more than ports to your TV, if that's something yous need, and the recent updates mean you're not going to cede any video quality while doing so.

Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/philips-hue-play-hdmi-sync-175827724.html

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