I’ve read about using your phone to “see” the colors on your TV show/movie so your colored bulbs will match watch you’re watching, but I don’t want to stick my phone in front of the TV the whole time. Is there a sensor that can be placed in front of the TV that can control my Hues bulb colors?
I use an app called Hue Ambilight on my Nvidia Shield TV which somehow intercepts the video signal and relays whatever color it “sees” to my Hue lightstrip on the back of my TV. It works great most of the time although it does have some limitations. There isn’t any control over what color it sees and you can’t divide up the TV screen into different sections for more granular lighting effects. The color transitions are sometimes too fast and can cause an almost strobing effect which can be a bit distracting when watching a show. I also noticed that it wasn’t compatible with Netflix videos.
Phillips has also just announced Hue Entertainment which will do the same thing through a new software update for v2 bridges. This feature won’t be available until later this year.
That sounds awesome. I wish there was a way to use something like that on my son’s PC so his lights would change in sync with his games.
Now I need to research what a Shield TV is. More homework…
Found something called Screenbloom. I’ll try that on my son’s computer tomorrow. (Paying in case someone else has the same question.)
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My two cents here having had a system that did what you describe in the past is that it gets really distracting to have the background lights changing colors all the time and sometimes it picks weird or ugly colors. I turned it off and went back to manually changing the color of the background light and greatly prefer this as I almost always have it set to an ocean blue hue. To each their own though of course.
Speaking to your question though, you’d need specifically designed hardware directly linked to your lights to make this work well. If it’s having to send commands through a hub first there would be lag.
That’s good to know. I just wondering how easy/cheap it would be to incorporate something like this for my son’s PC.
Might I ask what system you were using?
OK…I have a new situation, with some new questions. What the heck does Nvidia Shield do, and how do I set it up? I ask for two reasons:
- My son has a ZOTAC GeForce GTX, which Nvidia Shield is supposed to work with
"NVIDIA GameStream Ready
Your router is about to have a lot more fun. That’s because it can now stream all your favorite PC games to the NVIDIA® SHIELD™ portable to play anywhere in the house using fast, ultra-reliable NVIDIA GameStream™ technology. ASUS routers deliver lag-free, high-performance game streaming from GeForce® GTX™=powered PCs or NVIDIA GRID™ cloud gaming systems. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com/gamestream." - RT-AC68U｜WiFi Routers｜ASUS USA
- The other reason I ask is because I just upgraded my wired access point: I have an ATT wifi gigabit modem/router, and was using an old Linksys WRT54G (single band, 10/100) as a wired access point at the other end of the house. Connections were ok, but with occasional drops, and my son complains about “lag” on his computer when playing Steam.
So, started doing some research today, and found that the ASUS AC1900 (RT-AC68U) dual-band gigabit wifi router was a decent product for $135. Then I noticed there was a similar model (TM-AC1900) product for half the price. Turns out T-Mobile was giving them out for free to new costumers. The hardware is functionally identical, just different firmware. However, one has to “downgrade” the T-Mobile firmware in order to reinstall the original factory firmware.
Following the advice from another site, I looked on my OfferUp app, and saw that someone 5 miles from my house was selling their old T-Mobile AC1900 for $40! (Which is funny, because I have another buy/sell app called 5Miles, but this wasn’t on it.) Anyways, I met up with the guy, the router was in great shape, and I successfully transformed the TM-AC1900 into an RT-AC68U without bricking it (this included hex editing with MAC addresses!) Hopefully, my son will see improved gaming performance tomorrow.
Doing a little more research, it turns out this ASUS router can be combined with others to create a mesh network. And it just so happens that someone 20 minutes from my house is selling the same router for $30. I’ll see if I can convince my wife to let me drive us there after we donate blood tomorrow!
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Actually, what I have is an Android Media box that runs a variant of Google’s Android software designed for TVs using a remote. It can also run many Android games as well as stream games directly from a compatible PC using an Nvidia graphics card. In this way, you can easily play your games on your living room TV.