Those colour changing LED things
Discussion
Hi all,
Does anyone know of an aftermarket kit that recreates the Phillips Ambilight feature?
I've seen them advertised but they seem to work in PCs rather than a telly.
I would like it to change colour to mimic what is on the screen.
My TV is a fairly modern (less than 2 years) 60" Samsung if that matters.
Many thanks
Does anyone know of an aftermarket kit that recreates the Phillips Ambilight feature?
I've seen them advertised but they seem to work in PCs rather than a telly.
I would like it to change colour to mimic what is on the screen.
My TV is a fairly modern (less than 2 years) 60" Samsung if that matters.
Many thanks
nyt said:
Thanks for the links. Not sure what I would need from the second one. The first one looks the ticket but looks like it may not be coming back in stock.
aquarianone said:
I've been using those Govee lights in the first link for quite a few months now and they def work, and pretty decent for the money.
Might be worth keeping an eye on Ebay as well or pinging them an email to see if there's an other re-sellers.
How do they connect and work with the TV? I've read in some descriptions that you have to effectively connect a laptop or PC to the TV, for then to work, which I dont want to do. Might be worth keeping an eye on Ebay as well or pinging them an email to see if there's an other re-sellers.
So they can work just using the TV then?
The ones I've seen (eg the first link above) rely on a camera to 'see' whatever's on the screen and determine the correct colours and position from that. Quite how well they work I don't know, but I can't imagine they are as good as a true Ambilight given the latter has direct digital access to the source image. They might be perfectly fine though so I'd rely on someone with first-hand experience of both systems if I were you.
Yup, as above, there's a little camera that mounts to the top of the tv that feeds that detail back to a small box of tricks which is stuck to the back of the tv, which then connects to the light strips.
Mine's on a 65" and it works fine as long as you temper your expectations I guess.
I've had the standard light strips on the back and this is def more interesting than those.
It works best when there's a full screen image as opposed to a "leterbox'd" image as there's more detail for the camera to pick up on at the top of the screen.
Some of the Amazon reviews mention an issue with Green not being picked up correctly but i've not had any issue's.
The App is easy enough to use, and it works well enough with Alexa ( i just ask her to Switch it on/off)
For around £60 it's worth a punt, and miles cheaper than the Philips sync box kit (£200 + without lights)
(i've got Philips hue lights around the house, but still didn't want to fork out that much extra for tv lights )
Mine's on a 65" and it works fine as long as you temper your expectations I guess.
I've had the standard light strips on the back and this is def more interesting than those.
It works best when there's a full screen image as opposed to a "leterbox'd" image as there's more detail for the camera to pick up on at the top of the screen.
Some of the Amazon reviews mention an issue with Green not being picked up correctly but i've not had any issue's.
The App is easy enough to use, and it works well enough with Alexa ( i just ask her to Switch it on/off)
For around £60 it's worth a punt, and miles cheaper than the Philips sync box kit (£200 + without lights)
(i've got Philips hue lights around the house, but still didn't want to fork out that much extra for tv lights )
aquarianone said:
Yup, as above, there's a little camera that mounts to the top of the tv that feeds that detail back to a small box of tricks which is stuck to the back of the tv, which then connects to the light strips.
Mine's on a 65" and it works fine as long as you temper your expectations I guess.
I've had the standard light strips on the back and this is def more interesting than those.
It works best when there's a full screen image as opposed to a "leterbox'd" image as there's more detail for the camera to pick up on at the top of the screen.
Some of the Amazon reviews mention an issue with Green not being picked up correctly but i've not had any issue's.
The App is easy enough to use, and it works well enough with Alexa ( i just ask her to Switch it on/off)
For around £60 it's worth a punt, and miles cheaper than the Philips sync box kit (£200 + without lights)
(i've got Philips hue lights around the house, but still didn't want to fork out that much extra for tv lights )
Brilliant. Thank you. Do you happen to know if the kit you have is still available? Unfortunately the ones linked above are out of stock.Mine's on a 65" and it works fine as long as you temper your expectations I guess.
I've had the standard light strips on the back and this is def more interesting than those.
It works best when there's a full screen image as opposed to a "leterbox'd" image as there's more detail for the camera to pick up on at the top of the screen.
Some of the Amazon reviews mention an issue with Green not being picked up correctly but i've not had any issue's.
The App is easy enough to use, and it works well enough with Alexa ( i just ask her to Switch it on/off)
For around £60 it's worth a punt, and miles cheaper than the Philips sync box kit (£200 + without lights)
(i've got Philips hue lights around the house, but still didn't want to fork out that much extra for tv lights )
Many thanks
I used a kit from Lightberry (https://lightberry.eu/) It uses a Raspberry Pi, an HDMI splitter and some software to identify the colours at the edge of the screen and then conversation that to a light strip around the screen. It is brilliant if more costly than the camera ones. You can cobble something together yourself using the same software at a lower price. I had never used a Raspberry Pi before so had to learn about it to get it working, so thisn't Plug and Play.
aquarianone said:
It works best when there's a full screen image as opposed to a "leterbox'd" image as there's more detail for the camera to pick up on at the top of the screen
I've been thinking about the option of getting an Ambilight TV for a while and the 'letterbox' aspect is not something that had dawned on me until recently. Even with the genuine Ambilight this must surely undermine the effect somewhat as if the purpose of the lights is to extend the hue out beyond the screen then having black top and bottom isn't going to do much.. Or does extending the colour of the letterboxed image despite the black bars still give the desired effect?I think it's slightly different on an Amblight tv as the software is baked in as opposed to the Govee lights which rely on picking up the image on screen via the camera. ( I don't have a Philips tv so not 100% sure, just a guess)
It works fine on normal tv and most sky channels, Netflix and Prime etc, as it's all fullscreen, it's just some of the Movies that are letterbox'd so it sometimes struggles to put on a show, and defaults to offwhite, which is generally fine.
For what it's worth i've had a look around and can't see them available anywhere, so not sure if it's worth getting in touch with Govee directly (maybe via their Amazon store) and see if they have stock floating around or a new model coming out.
Worst case, some usb strip lights on the back of the tv for around £20 is better than nothing and a good first step.
It works fine on normal tv and most sky channels, Netflix and Prime etc, as it's all fullscreen, it's just some of the Movies that are letterbox'd so it sometimes struggles to put on a show, and defaults to offwhite, which is generally fine.
For what it's worth i've had a look around and can't see them available anywhere, so not sure if it's worth getting in touch with Govee directly (maybe via their Amazon store) and see if they have stock floating around or a new model coming out.
Worst case, some usb strip lights on the back of the tv for around £20 is better than nothing and a good first step.
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