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If you’ve been looking for a lighting solution for your gaming room or just to make movies and TV more immersive, you might have been looking at the Philips Hue Play bars. These smart, colour-changing light bars could mimic the colours of the lights to what was happening on screen. Previously the Philips Hue Play light bar system was designed mainly for computer gaming but there was a way to hack this to get the lighting effects to play on your TV, though it was a bit of a process (read about the Hue Play Light Bars and my hacks in this review)

Since then, Philips has announced a new component designed to help bring smart lighting and special effects to your TV or gaming screen in a much easier way, using the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box.

What is Philips Hue HDMI Sync Box and what does it do?

The new HDMI Sync box connects to your TV and lets you connect up to four external components and peripherals so you can personalize your Hue lighting experience and have it match what’s playing on the TV. Worth noting you do still need a Hue Bridge (to connect to your home’s Wi-Fi network) and Hue smart lights like the Play Bars.

Easier set up: no hacking!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this new device, but set up is surprisingly easy.

You just add the Sync box as a new device and connect it to your Hue Bridge. But there are a few other steps, and a separate app needed.

For this review, I’m going to assume you already have Phillips Hue play lights, and the necessary Phillips Hue Bridge, and have set these devices up already or connected to them to your account.

To start with the Hue Sync, first download and open the new Phillips Hue Sync mobile app.

Connect the Hue Sync box to your TV by plugging in the HDMI cable into the HDMI output port on the Sync box, and then one of the HDMI ‘in’ ports on your television. Conveniently, the HDMI cable is included in the box. 

Connect any devices such as streaming devices or gaming consoles that you want to use through the Sync box, as opposed to the TV. Make sure to power the box on by pressing and holding the power button that is barely visible on the front of the device.

Using the Sync app, you’ll first pair the box to Bluetooth, then connect to your home’s Wi-Fi.


The app will help you pair the Philips Hue Sync box to your Phillips Hue bridge.

As with many new set-ups involving the Bridge, you may need to access it and push the button on the top of the bridge.

Next you will need to go back to the other Philips Hue app and create what’s called an Entertainment Area. This allows you to tell the Sync box and the Bridge which lights to activate while you’re watching TV.

You can use the Phillips Hue Play bars which are recommended for this purpose, or any other Philips Hue lights in your ecosystem, even overheads or lamps. The app will walk you thought placing your lights and how to add and adjust them. Save your settings.

When you’re ready, return to the Hue Sync app, and click ‘start sync’. While this may seem like an extra step, it lets you keep the effects off if you don’t want the full immersion, like if you’re watching the news, maybe.

Once you hit the start button, your lights should start responding almost right away.

Depending on where in the room they are, whether that’s right around the TV, or placed around the room, the effect may be of different intensity, varying colors, and some of the lights may not respond at all, at times.

It’s probably worth pointing out, but they Hue Sync effects doesn’t appear to work solely with the TV’s smart operating system. You need to have a third party streaming device connected into the Sync box, like an Apple TV, Roku streaming stick, cable box, gaming console or other. If you are just hoping to use this with the Netflix or YouTube streaming app that lives on your TV zone operating system, it seems that’s not how this works.

Overall review of Philips Hue HDMI Sync box

In short, this box does what it says, but it does have some limitations. For example, the lights match up to the video quite well, and create a room-filling effect. But the box doesn’t work with my smart TV alone; you need peripherals connected through the box.

The Philips Hue HDMI Sync box sells for about $299CAD which makes it a very pricey addition to your home theatre or gaming set up.

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