Imagine your screen coming to life with perfectly synced lighting that reacts to your favorite movies, games, and music. 

The new Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K transforms your home entertainment into a fully immersive experience with ultra-fast refresh rates (8K 60Hz & 4K 120Hz), HDMI 2.1 certification, and seamless integration with up to 10 Philips Hue lights – without the clutter of external cameras or wire.

To take your smart home lighting even further there’s the Neon Flex, Fairy & String Lights.

The Neon Flex Strip (5m) allows you to shape light in bold, artistic designs with flexible, bendable LED strips that create immersive colour gradients, the new Fairy Lights are a dazzling way to bring warmth and magic to any room, garden, or gaming setup. With over 16 million colours, dynamic effects, and music-sync features, they transform every occasion into a mood-lit experience.

Or add String Lights for the perfect for indoor and outdoor use, these versatile lights allow you to customise the ambiance with a spectrum of colours and smart control via the WiZ app or voice commands.

Philips Hue wellness lighting helps support better sleep, productivity, and relaxation through circadian-friendly lighting. The natural light scene mimics natural sunlight, transitioning between warm and cool tones throughout the day – boosting wakefulness in the morning and promoting melatonin production at night.

If the neon LED atmosphere isn’t for you, Philips has Gradient Signe Floor & Table Lamps, which are a stylish and mood-enhancing, these lamps blend multiple colours to create a gradient lighting effect that complements your home. The Hue Iris Copper Special Edition is a  statement piece that provides a warm glow and soft backlight to enhance relaxation, and for on-the-go get yourself the Go Portable Accent Light, a versatile light that you can take anywhere, whether for a cozy ambiance or energising workspace lighting.

All Philips Hue smart lighting products are available now.

The post Light Up Your Home Entertainment appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

You don’t have a gaming den, room or dungeon if you don’t set the right lighting.

You can have a killer RIG, all the best peripherals, superior audio but without the mood you’re not going to be able to immerse yourself fully.

Philips have got you sorted with their PC monitor Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip.

A simple yet super effective solution you’ll get all of the bits that you need in the box.

From the mounting brackets through to the bendy Lightstrip itself. There is a bit of DIY from the box, but this enables you to mount the Lightstrip to your liking on flat back or curved screens.

The easiest way to get this fixed to the back of your monitor is to stick the two corner brackets on first – then clip the Lightstrip in to the straight brackets and place.

Once you’re happy with it being at centre top stick in place with the sticky backs on the brackets.

Plug it all in and download the Philips Hue app.

You’ll also need a Philips Hue Bridge. This is not included with the Lightstrip, you will need to purchase one these separately. The Hue Bridge enables your lights to be able to connect to your home WiFi.

If you already have one of these, you’ll be able to begin with the set up through the app. If you need one of these, this too is also set up via the app, once it’s connected to your home router.

The Philips Hue app is your one stop place to customize your Play Gradient Lightstrip.

Choose from a library of scenes or create your own and set schedules.

The Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip comes in two sizes. I have a 46 inch curved monitor and received a 32 to 34 inch unit for this review – it was a perfect fit.

Once lit up it really does transform your entire environment and you can create scenes for differing games or just to match the theme of your space.

Or sync up with the Hue Play Gradient desktop app to get your on-screen visuals matched with the background lighting.

Doing this also creates not only more immersion but actually gives the illusion that your monitor is larger than it actually is.

Personally I love the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip. It is one of those kits that you didn’t know you needed until you have one and it’s illuminating your gaming zone.

Light and sync’em up before you get in to play.

The post Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Signify has released details on a new range of Philips Hue smart lighting products and app features, from unique design options to complement home décor and create the perfect ambiance, to more immersive entertainment experiences for gaming and music.

New launches include a striking range of contemporary style, a new gradient lightstrip specifically designed for PC monitors to bring the ultimate light experience to PC gaming and a new Mimic presence automation to the Hue app for more peace of mind when you’re away. To further enhance immersive lighting in terms of gaming and enjoying music, Philips Hue has teamed up with exciting new partners, ensuring an even more seamless experience.

The new Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip for PC brings the ultimate light experience to PC gaming.

Gradient-enabled lightstrips produce multiple colours of light at the same time, creating a seamless gradient of rich, high-quality light. The colours flow naturally into one another to create a truly captivating effect.

The Play gradient lightstrip for PC flashes, dances, dims, and brightens right along with the on- screen action, creating an immersive gaming experience. The Play gradient lightstrip attaches to the back of your monitor with the included mounts and creates a halo effect when the monitor is placed close to a wall, thanks to the 45 degree sleeve design. The lightstrip’s flexibility means it can be added to straight or curved monitors and comes in three different sizes to equip your battle stations, a 24 / 27-inch lightstrip and a 32 / 34-inch lightstrip for single-monitor setups, and a longer strip designed for a three-monitor setup using 24 / 27-inch screens.

To support your immersive gaming experience, Philips Hue and CORSAIR have teamed up to give you the ultimate gaming setup and bring your gaming to life with light. You can use CORSAIR iCUE to set scenes on Philips Hue lights in your room or gaming space, synchronising with your CORSAIR RGB gaming peripherals to create the perfect gaming atmosphere.

To keep your immersive entertainment setup simple and user-friendly whether gaming or simply watching the TV, the current sync box mobile app will be merged with the Hue app in Q4 2022. The merge of the Philips Hue sync app into the main Hue app means users can start and complete their full entertainment flow, all in one place. The Hue app is the new home for creating entertainment areas, setting up the sync box, controlling the sync box, or enabling features such as voice and IR control for the sync box. The sync mobile app – the separate app that controls the sync box – will be phased out from app stores.

Philips Hue is making syncing lights with music available on even more devices. Now you can immerse yourself in music by syncing your Philips Hue smart lights with your favourite songs on any Samsung Galaxy smartphone with Philips Hue + SmartThings music sync. If you use a Galaxy phone or tablet, use the Music Sync feature in Samsung’s SmartThings app to connect your smart lights. When you update the SmartThings app, SmartThings will enable Hue sync, an easy way to sync your lights and music from most streaming services on your mobile device. Planned for Q4 2022.

The new Philips Hue Mimic presence automation in the Hue app makes it appear like someone’s always home. It’s designed to safeguard your home with light and help give you peace of mind when you’re away. This specialised automation turns your lights on and off automatically at times when you usually use them, and in the Rooms you select. You can select which lights you want to automate, and choose whether to have the lights turn on or off continuously during the daytime or only when it’s dark outside. Available early September 2022.

“At Philips Hue, we believe the continued integration of smart lighting and home entertainment is increasingly relevant to our users, whether they’re gaming, watching TV, or listening to music. With our new products and app features, we continue to offer a more immersive and user-friendly entertainment experience. We also recognise that our users are design-conscious and so we strive to bring them new, exciting, and elegant lighting products that complement their home and give the opportunity to personalise the ambiance,” said Jasper Vervoort, Business Leader Philips Hue at Signify.

Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip for PC will be available from November 2022.

The post Philips Hue Lights Up PC Gaming appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Signify has just released info on a large range of new Philips Hue smart lighting products and features to create a light experience like no other.

New products include three new gradient-enabled products, new White ambiance Filament bulbs, more powerful smart bulbs, and ceiling lights. Finally, with new updates to the Philips Hue app that includes a first-ever deep integration of lighting and music with Spotify, it’s an exciting year for smart lighting.

Last year’s launch of the Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip was just the beginning, now, Philips Hue is expanding the gradient collection with the brand-new Philips Hue Play gradient light tube.

It features gradient technology that blends multiple colours of lights in a single lamp or fixture and is specially designed to sit above or below a TV. You can complete your home theatre set up with the Play gradient light tube in black.

Gradient technology has also enhanced other Philips Hue favorites – offered as the upgraded Philips Hue gradient Signe floor, available in black, and the Philips Hue ambiance gradient lightstrip.

On top of bringing all the flexibility and powerful light of the regular Philips Hue lightstrip, this new lightstrip will have the ability to blend colourful light.

The innovative Philips Hue + Spotify integration intertwines light and music, creating a unique immersive entertainment experience in your own home. After linking your Philips Hue and Spotify accounts, the Philips Hue app extracts the metadata from each song played through Spotify no matter the device.

It then creates an advanced light script that enables your lights to react not only to the beat of the song, but to the genre and mood too. In the new Sync tab of the Philips Hue app, users can adjust brightness, intensity and even the colour palette of the lights to personalise the experience. Whether you’re relaxing on the couch during a cozy night in, having friends over for a get-together, or doing your chores along to a custom playlist, you’ll experience music like never before.

The Philips Hue + Spotify integration will start rolling out globally as of September 1, 2021, as early access program to Philips Hue app 4 users. After October 2021, the feature will be a permanent part of the Hue app 4.

“As the world leader in smart lighting, we are constantly looking to offer our Philips Hue users new and exciting ways to create immersive and personalised lighting experiences at home. With the newest additions to the gradient collection and the integration with Spotify, we offer consumers the possibility to blend light, colour and sound and enjoy the most advanced smart lighting experience yet,” said Jasper Vervoort, Business Leader Philips Hue at Signify.

All Philips Hue Filament bulbs are now also available in White ambiance, making it possible to use any shade of warm-to-cool white light.

These vintage-style LED smart bulbs brighten the room by using blue-toned light when you need to concentrate during your workday, and then dim to golden tones to create a cozy and warm ambiance to relax. And they even look beautiful switched off.

Furthermore, the iconic-shaped Philips Hue smart bulbs across the White, White ambiance, and White and colour ambiance portfolios are now also available in variations of 1100 and 1600 lumen, enabling users to choose the perfect type of brightness for each activity and part of the home.

The new lineup of Philips Hue ceiling lights bring millions of colours to your living room or bedroom. Philips Hue Infuse ceiling light comes in white and colour ambiance.

Also, available in white, the Philips Hue Enrave ceiling light offers warm-to-cool white light for the living room, bedroom or kitchen. The Enrave is also available as a pendant, shining a powerful light downward at a dining room table or kitchen island while casting a subtle decorative glow upward.

From September 1 2021, the recently launched Philips Hue app 4 features dynamic scenes.

Instead of each light remaining at only one colour, dynamic scenes allow the lights in the Room or Zone to slowly transition through the different colours of the scene and create an atmosphere unlike any other.

Additionally, Signify already announced another new feature to be added to the Hue scene gallery in Spring 2021.

With specially designed scenes that run 24 hours, your lights will adjust its colour and brightness as time passes. The first new scene, natural light, mimics the sun’s movement throughout the day with warm-to-cool white light to support your productivity as well as your overall wellbeing.

The time slots can be customised based on your daily routine. Start with bright, cool tones to energise your mornings and end your day with warmer, golden glows that help you relax as the sun goes down.

Lastly, gaming fanatics will welcome the upcoming software update to the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box in Spring 2021.

Users will be able to update their sync box to be compatible with the newest game consoles’ 120Hz support, ensuring competitive players to be on top of the game with the highest refresh rate. The sync box is able to support 120Hz with an image resolution of 1080p and 1440p.

Alternatively, if the highest image resolution is preferred, the current sync box also continues to support a 4K image resolution up to a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Philips Hue ambiance gradient lightstrip will be available from November 2021, The rest of the range will be available throughout 2022.

The post Philips Hue – Blending Light, Colour & Sound appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Signify is extending the Philips Hue outdoor collection with a new range of smart wall lights, pathway lights and low-voltage fixtures to bring any outdoor space to life with mood settings for any occasion.

The new range has 16 million colours and 50,000 shades of warm-to-cool white light for effortless personalisation.

The highlight of the range includes uplights and downlights that create strong and unique directional light effects and are new to the Philips Hue family.

The Hue Outdoor extension range also offers low-voltage lighting solutions, providing outdoor lighting that requires minimal installation effort and high energy savings.

Commenting on the new release, Duane Shore, Channel Marketing Manager for the Pacific, said, “The Hue Outdoor range allows you to discover the magic of using colour to completely transform your garden or entertainment spaces. With the cooler months approaching, this new range can transform your outdoor areas into a warm space for entertaining or relaxing.”

All new products connect to the existing Hue ecosystem, meaning renovators, DIYers or smart lighting enthusiasts can now enjoy the endless possibilities on offer of bringing your outdoors to life with light.

The new Philips Hue Outdoor range allows you to experience the comfort of your outdoor lights turning on automatically as you arrive home, and off as you leave. By simply setting your Hue app to the Home or Away mode, the outdoor lighting system will adjust to your movements. The geolocation feature on the app can also be used so that your lights turn on or off based on your proximity to your home, giving you peace of mind and an added sense of safety.

By using the pre-set light recipes built into the Philips Hue mobile app, users can select to have their lights mimic their presence at home adding another level of safety, as a deterrent to thieves during the longer nights of the winter months.

Your smart outdoor lights become even smarter when you connect your Philips Hue Outdoor lighting system to a smart home assistant. With this feature, you can transform any outdoor space to suit the ambiance and mood all with the ease and convenience of managing your lights all with your voice. Once linked to your smart home assistant, the Hue Outdoor lighting will listen to your voice commands and react in real time.

The Philips Hue system works with all the popular home voice assistant systems including Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung SmartThings and Apple’s Siri among others.

With the Philips Hue lighting schedule feature, you’ll never again worry whether you’ve left your lights on. The Hue app allows you to set scheduled timers for your lighting system based on your daily routines and requirements. Now, you can enjoy longer evenings outside or have the lights turn on automatically as your loved ones arrive home.

The post Signify launches voice-activated outdoor lighting appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Get in to your game and light up your mood with Philips Hue Play.

The newest addition to Philip’s Hue smart LED lights range are two large cylindrical light bars that can either be placed flat on a desk, table or floor, or propped up with the provided stands – or even attached to the back of your screen or TV via the supplied sticky pads.

However you mount them, the idea of having a set of Hue Play smart lights is for them to be out of sight, except for their glow of course.

Philips Hue Play’s rely on having the Hue Bridge. This is a separate piece of hardware that connects either wirelessly or cabled to your modem.

Initially you will need to cable it in and then get the Philips Hue App (iOS / Android) to get it all setup and running.

Mostly it’s a simple setup, the App will locate the Bridge once it is connected to your router then you use the App to control what connects to your Bridge.

Frustration can set in though when the Bridge cannot find your Hue Lights.

Auto scan is a bit flaky and it rarely finds anything. So in order to connect your Hue Play smart lights you will need to do a manual search.

Provided on the manual of the smart lights is the serial numbers of both units. Adding these in to the manual search the App via the Bridge will locate them.

I had a few issues though, where one light was found immediately and the secondary one was not being detected at all. It turned out to be a distance issue. So my advice is to perform your initial setup with your modem, the Hue Bridge and Hue Play smart lights all together in one area.

At home I have a few Alexa Echos and Spots. Alexa controls all of my smart home devices and adding Philips Hue in to the fold was surprisingly easy.

While the Hue App has customizable options and different lighting and mood scenes for you to play with, it just became a lot straight forward when doing it through Alexa.

Downloading and installing the Hue Sync App (iOS / Android) is where your Hue Play’s really get going.

With this initiative you can sync it up (HDMI and a sync box required) to your home theatre and have the lights change colour, mode, flash and more to music, movies and of course gaming.

There is also a wealth of third party apps that can really bring forth the functionality and features of the Hue Plays than the actual official App does.

Philips Hue can be integrated in to Apple Home / Siri and Google with Google Assistant.

Whether you decide to use a smart home A.I. or just make do with the Hue App you’ll be able to make the Hue Plays all your own and set schedules, make your own lighting combinations and create scenes for every form of entertainment.

The brightness level and hues are all absolutely configurable to your liking. However, I do think that the ease of use of the Hue smart lights connectivity still needs some work. I imagine new comers to the realm of smart lights would find themselves a bit lost and completely frustrated when something needs troubleshooting.

The initial setup has the intention of being user friendly, but it can be super complicated – especially when something doesn’t work as it should.

The App and the UI of the Hue Bridge still needs a bit of work in my view to make it the simplest process for novices. But once you’re connected, you’re done and shouldn’t need to go through the setup again (unless you add more smart lights).

The Philips Hue Play smart lights are right at home, in your home theatre setup and a must have in any video gaming dungeon.

They are out of sight, but not out of mind as they transform your play area in to an illuminated world of entertainment.

The post Philips Hue Play Smart-lights Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Global leader in lighting Signify has announced the release of the new Philips Hue Play.

The Philips Hue Play is a small and discreet LED lighting system designed to enhance the experience of PC gamers, movie enthusiasts and create the perfect ambience for music listening. By using the Hue Play with the Hue Sync desktop app, users can extend the effects of their computer screen to their Philips Hue Play and transform their entire room into a personal entertainment area!

Playing a PC game with the Hue Play, explosions light up the room. Firing effects result in bright strobing stabs of colourful illumination. The gloom of spooky monster-ridden wastelands extend beyond the screen drowning the room in atmospheric greens and blues until a magical exchange of fire and wizardry sees the room awash in vivid pinks and whites. 

An exciting addition to the Philips Hue ecosystem of smart lighting products, the Hue Play consists of elegantly housed LED light bars that are flexible as well as easy to install with a full accessory kit included to help you set up your Hue play the way you want. 

Log into the Hue app on your mobile phone or tablet, and the Hue Play can be added to your existing Philips Hue Smart lighting ecosystem.

Users can choose from 16 million colours to craft their own unique lighting recipes or alternatively, select from a range of pre-created scenes to produce the look and feel they desire. The lighting effects of the Hue Play are made all the more impressive by mounting to the rear of your TV or monitor so that the lights reflect off walls and surrounds. You can use it to create a TV backlight feature, create the perfect ambience for a relaxed evening or dive even deeper into your games with synchronized lighting effects using the PC based Hue Sync app. 

Whether you are having friends over for dinner or relaxing with a book Philips Hue Play can add to your existing Hue ecosystem and help create the right atmosphere to suit every mood. Either laid flat or stood upright, the Philips Hue Play gives users the flexibility to be creative with their room design. 

With Philips Hue Play, you can now bring the mood of your favourite movie into your living room or bring the football stadium atmosphere to your sofa. Philips Hue Play visually lengthens the playing field making users feel like they’re in the stands. 

Hard core PC gaming enthusiasts will embrace the Philips Hue Play; connected via the Philips Hue Sync app, the in-game effects of PC or Mac games are translated into an immediate light script. No matter what game you’re playing, the gaming experience is deepened. Action packed FPS games benefit from the rapid-fire LED visuals responding to in-game fire control, explosions and ambient effects which bring the entire gaming area alive. 

Gamers will find further enhancements for those using Razer’s range of Chroma equipped peripherals such as gaming mice, keyboards and pads. Integration between the Hue lighting system to Razer’s Synapse 3 software gives gamers the power to immerse themselves in effects designed by the game developers themselves.

The Philips Hue Play is available as either a single or double pack, the latter featuring two LED light bars. An additional extension pack adds another light bar and connection cable to further expand your lighting system. The kits come with 240V power supply as well as an accessory pack that gives users multiple options for non-destructive mounting of the product to a TV or other furniture as well as bases that facilitate each light bar to be freestanding.

Each 6W Hue Play bar delivers 530 lumen output at 2000-6500 CCT depending on setting used and measures 253.3mm long by 44.3mm deep x 35.8mm width. You’ll find the Philips Hue Play in the lighting, tech or smart home section of your nearest major retailer or consumer electronics stores.

Keep a lookout for a product review coming real soon!

The post Light Up Your Gaming w. Philips Hue appeared first on Shane the Gamer.