Philips Hue adds a $119.99 TV light-sync option

At the IFA tech show in Berlin, a fisheye lens perched above a television marked Philips Hue’s cheaper route into screen-synced lighting: the new Play Screen Sync starts at $119.99 and is on sale now. Signify also put the stripped-down Sync Box 4K on sale for $150, compared with $385 for the 8K model.

The two systems make Hue’s color-changing lights follow games, movies or cable news. The Sync Box takes the picture from devices connected to the TV through HDMI, while the camera watches the screen itself. Its fisheye lens works with automatic calibration and color-matching technology, allowing the system to handle content played through apps and services built into the television.

The cheaper hardware comes with clear trade-offs. Signify says its HDMI boxes are more accurate than the camera-based solution, but the Sync Box 4K has one HDMI input instead of four, uses HDMI 2.0 instead of HDMI 2.1, and supports 4K at 60Hz. Camera-based competitors from Govee start at $90; Philips Hue’s head of technology, George Yianni, says Hue’s solution is different because it’s simple to install, with algorithms that auto-detect the TV panel type, ambient room lighting, white-balance correction and screen corners.

Concretely, viewers can now try Hue’s TV lighting with a lower upfront cost and without buying a Hue bridge: all three Hue Sync solutions can work directly with one Play strip, and a bridge can be added later if more lights are needed. The camera option also covers content that HDMI boxes cannot reach, while the box remains the more precise choice for connected devices.

Signify is also adding cuttable Play gradient strips and bundled starter kits. A black-housed Pro version using Hue’s OmniGlow technology fits TVs up to 100 inches, starts at $179.99 for 65 inches, and is available September 15. The lineup now offers cheaper alternatives to the 8K sync box, but buyers still have to choose between camera compatibility, HDMI precision and the 4K model’s narrower hardware specifications.