Philips HuePlay Gradient 65" Smart TV Light Strip, Flowing Color-Changing LED Strip Lights, Multicolour TV Backlight Sync with Music and Gaming, Requires Bridge & Sync Box, Control with App and Voice

I absolutely love the Hue strip lights! They completely transformed the look and feel of my room. The colors are vibrant, the brightness is perfect, and installation was simple. It’s such an easy upgrade that makes a huge difference — worth every penny!

The media could not be loaded. It does what you expect. On top of the Gradient Lightstrip for my TV, I also bought the play bars. You can isolate each light into individual colors. If you’re not new to the LED scene, then know you should be familiar with setting scenes with the app.When everything arrived, I immediately started setting up. The first problem I had was connecting the bridge to the internet. The first two lights came on but not the third. Without being connected to the internet, I can’t access the bridge with the app or move on with the rest of the installation. The solution to that, was that I plugged the network cable it came with from the bridge to the splitter I have. Come to find out, the bridge doesn’t work with splitters. Technically, the protocol doesn’t allow for it. You have to directly connect it to the router.I have a 70 inch Samsung Smart TV. I bought the 65” light strip. After setting up all the lights, the bridge, and the sync box, I was excited to play something colorful like Avatar or Spiderman(across the spiderverse). So, having smart tv and all I had to do was press the Netflix button on my remote and it brings me to the TV app(There’s a reason I say that) BUT, starting a movie, the lights just dimmed to the lowest white light and they were not synced to what was being shown on screen. The app kept showing me that nothing was connected to the sync box. I of course didn’t understand if I connect my tv to the box. After hours of research, I’ve done everything I could from getting different HDMI cables, to switching ends, to factory resetting the sync box, to seeing if my tv needed to be updated. I was afraid I bought a defective sync box. My last last thing to try was to call customer support. Surprisingly, after dialing the number, less than 5 minutes, I was on the phone with someone, which is impressive.Come to find out… to have lights sync, you can’t use it with TV Applications. You have to have a second source such as a PlayStation, Xbox, Firestick and so on. After learning that, I connected my PlayStation to the sync box, went to a YouTube video and it worked.So if you’re having this same issue, hopefully I was able to help someone out. Looking it up, I wasn’t the only one stumped with this same problem.All in all, after I got it to work, it’s amazing! The lights on top of a surround sound system, you don’t have to go to the movies anymore. You have an enhanced theater right in front of you. If you’re not watching TV, you can still work the lights with the app and either set a scene or choose whatever color(s) you prefer.It’s expensive for no reason. But you get what you pay for and that’s quality. You won’t be disappointed.P.S. The Bridge, Sync Box, and the Lights all use a big box plug. The blocky ones. So I had to utilize another power strip to get everything plugged in and working on top of everything I already had plugged.

Adds a nice ambiance behind the TV when I watch movies. It's a perfect fit for my 55" Samsung TV.

The Hue Sync experience is truly fun. I can't speak to the HDMI box because I use a PC, but I have a 77 inch LG G1 and I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate the light representation is. I've ran a large number of light show programs to test where and when the colors change and it is pretty spot on accurately changing colors exactly as it does on screen in the exact same spot. I was worried because it only has 7 light zones (2 on each side and 3 on top) but I've almost never noticed it not changing perfectly in sync with what is displayed. The very few times it has been off have been with a grueling spinning color wheel test image or other purposefully demanding content. Even then it is only by a little and you have to be looking for it, in normal use you will never see it miss even when looking for it. My TV is wall mounted and I didn't even have to take it off the mount. My only issue is it doesn't cover the bottom of the screen and Philips doesn't offer any solutions to cover that area that are as competent as the strip. I even purchased the Gradient Ambient Light Strip thinking it would do the job since it is basically the exact same product only without a preinstalled diffuser, but that turned out to be the only disappointing Hue product I have purchased. The Gradient Ambient light strip just doesn't work well with sync at all. It has 3 zones and depending on how you have it set up (where it is located in your room) it can display the wrong side of the screen or even have one zone that doesn't even work at all (either just a white light or it's off). Considering that one strip cost me 200 dollars I was pretty miffed about this and their customer support is very lacking. After days of talking to customer support on Facebook of all the hated places (I can't call as they are closed when I am home and they literally don't have an email address) they finally got back to me with a simple "we are aware of the problem". The Hue Play Bars work surprisingly well but it can be a pain to place their location in the app to get them to display colors properly. But this review is about the Gradient Lightstrip not the company, and that as a stand alone product works very, very well. So if you can live with no lights on the bottom, fighting to get a workaround solution you can live with considering it will never be as good as the rest of the screen, or it isn't an issue for you at all it is a must buy. As far as brightness goes it is plenty bright in my opinion, usable even in daylight as long as you close the blinds (I have normal wooden slat blinds not blackout blinds by any means) and the light shines across my entire wall and up into the ceiling or to the side and off the side wall. In fact yow will probably want to turn it down quite a bit as the light can be so bright it's distracting from the actual content. The music sync feature needs work though. It could benefit from some options as it seems pretty random what part of the music it reacts to, and with multiple lights it's hard to tell what part of the music any given light is reacting to.

TLDR - it’s a pain to set up and the end result isn’t worth $500+. Also, it won’t sync with apps on your TV.Oh my goodness how I wish I listened to the reviewers who said this isn’t worth it. I spent a little over an hour setting the whole system up. I feel for someone who isn’t tech savvy because it’s more complex than you’d think.When it’s all said and done, you need 4 open outlets to run this setup. 4! The light strip, the Hue, the HDMI sync, and the Bridge! The Bridge has to be hardwired into your router. Not to mention the HDMI sync box doesn’t come with the USB cord you need for it to know if your TV is on or not. Phillips is charging over $500 and can’t include a necessary USB cord?! I was in disbelief.Another reviewer mentioned it doesn’t support HDMI 2.1 and that’s quite outrageous when you think about how fast tech moves. This will likely be outdated in the blink of an eye. You’re also watering down your picture quality the moment you add more connections. This setup requires everything you want to use the sync feature with to run through the HDMI sync box which then feeds into your TV.I wanted so badly to love this. I had been waiting for over a year to take the plunge and buy it. Prime Day was the perfect opportunity, but even with the discounts I cannot recommend this item.