Philips HuePlay HDMI Sync Box, Surround Lighting for TV Entertainment & Gaming Compatible with Alexa

The Philips Hue Play HDMI combined with the Gradient Lightstrip has completely revamped my entertainment setup. Setup was a breeze, and the effects are great with vibrant colours improving the viewing experience. The integration with Spotify, where the lights sync and pulse to the rhythm of the music is also a great feature or you can just adjust colours and brightness to personalise the room like other Hue lights. The combined cost is a little pricey but I'm happy that I decided to go for it.

The media could not be loaded. Initially I was a little disappointed as, like others, I experienced the Sync Box losing connection. However, after a little digging I found this could be easily resolved by:- replacing the supplied Philips HDMI connecting the Sync Box to the TV, with a good quality/fast lead - I know, it's ridiculous given the cost!- Use the two fastest HDMI ports (2 & 4) on the Sync Box for the most demanding inputs (i.e Firestick/games console etc), Philips confirmed these have more bandwidth. Something like a Freesat/SKY box will work happily in one of the other ports- if you are using a Fire Stick/Roku this should be connected directly into the back of the Sync Box without the use of an extender cableSince this was done our box hasn't missed a beat during movies or whilst listening to music/video content via Prime Music.It is expensive, but for those already heavily invested in Hue coloured bulbs this is a no brainer.

Purchased this from Amazon warehouse at a decent price. Was slightly worried when I received due to the condition of the outer box as it looked in a bad way but on install all works fine. Anyway, I have the Hue kit in my house which is fantastic and it all runs very well through my existing Hub. I have a new Philips OLED TV - I decided to go with the higher spec TV rather than the backlit version and I always had this sync box in mind to complete the setup. It is fantastic and took me around 30 minutes to set up as it is so straightforward if you have the app and hub already. Download the sync app, follow the instructions and enjoy. I had already done research on the pros and cons so I connected my main two devices to ports 2 & 4 which have the most bandwidth. After setup, I spent some time adjusting some of the Sync box settings to my liking and I suppose this part could be frustrating as it is totally dependent on your other devices that are connected plus how you like the kit to work in your environment. The end result in fantastic and in my opinion worth every penny.Update 11th October.Issues with the box not auto switching on & off with TV. App controlled, it worked fine but had to manually switch on and off each time which is not ideal. After hours of messing about I also purchased some new quality HDMI from Amazon to see if that solved it. Made no difference so I gave up and returned to Amazon as faulty. I will definitely purchase another as the set up was fantastic. I wont be risking a warehouse return again and will buy a brand new one instead. Lesson learnt.

The media could not be loaded. Omg! What can I say, is worth the money,easy to set up and definitely looking to add more hue lights to my entertainment area. Brilliant product. Thank you

Sent back an hour after receiving it. Firstly, I was having issues connecting it to my network. This was fixed by forcing my phone to connect to the WiFi via 2.4ghz as 5ghz is not compatible. Once it was setup and connected to my set top box, my universal remote became incompatible. Then I connected it t my Xbox, where it would flicker the screen every 5 seconds. Messed around with the settings and did some googling and apparently there's no fix. Quite annoying really given how expensive the whole hue range is.

The media could not be loaded. I was ready to return this because my lights only showed dim white but, after researching lots and lots on Reddit and other places, it was possible to get it working by setting my fire TV cube display settings to adaptive HDR instead of always on. I put the fire TV cube into HDMI 2 of the sync box and set set the HDR setting in the hue app.Now it works perfectly in combination with all the hue lights and the TV bars by hue in my room. I'm so happy that it all works now.Originally, I had some TV back lights that had a camera mounted on the screen which kind of worked but because I have coloured lights in my room, the colours on the screen picked up by the camera were not accurateI don't get that with a Philips ambilight TV because the image it uses is internal just like the HDMI sync box.Sometimes the hue sync takes a while to connect to my hue bridge, I can set it to low or a strong effect and the brightness too .I got mine on offer from Amazon, I see a few on offer and I suspect many people had the same dim white bulbs problem and sent it back because they didn't know that the always on HDR of the fire TV OS wasn't the problem (It is set to on by default). I've seen a few messages report that the HDR on the source device can be a problem with this box. Switching off HDR options is usually the solution.It can look extreme with the right video but, with normal movies and TV the effect is subtle and very immersive. You don't notice it until it is goneI'm never going back too flat regular TV again![Edit] I read that sometimes the sync box can take a while connecting if it is in a weak Wi-Fi area. I set mine to connect to my repeater that is in the same room and I haven't had any connection issues since