Sync (Entertainment) on your phone or Android TV

Is anyone else using the LIFX Z Light Strip in Combination with a Nvidia Shield TV Pro and having some strange behavior? The Ambilight often reacts too quickly/fast, even on the lowest intensity settings.
Sometimes it also recognizes colors in places where there is just black.
Is there anything we can do about the black detection/general border of picture recognition + an additional lower speed? And something like a manual color calibration would be great, they are sometimes kinda off!
So do not misunderstand, the general experience is still very cool, just not quite soo perfect. But it can definitely become, if you still turn the 2-3 small screws :slight_smile:
Thanks for all the hard work!

Thanks for the feedback. If you have a specific video or so which does not appear to sync how you want, please let me know. Or maybe you can send us a short video of your lights syncing in a situation you think can be improved. You can send a video to support@hueessentials.com.

There is currently no way to manually configure black bars. Hue Essentials should work correctly with black bars, but us mentioned above please let us know if it is not working as expected for you.

Lower speed would be much more better imo. Also will you add Dolby Vision support? Because colors mismatch

I’m complete newbie to Hue Essentials and bought it for a number of reasons, all of which are as expected except the Sync feature. I was not expecting it to appear to be a wrapper around the Philips app functionality and limited to a small subset of Zigbee bulbs/lights. This is no better than the basic Hue app with the addition of capturing cideo direct without the need for an expensive HDMI box.

I do understand the reputational risks involved in allowing any old Zigbee lights to be driven, slow reponses, wrong colours etc. but if that is a choice by the developers and not an underlying Hue API then perhaps there could be a “Caution Here Be Dragons” tick box to allow paying users to test the risk for themselves?

My lastest light set-up is based on Gledopto “Pro” controllers (which claim somewhere online to be much faster responding then the original ones) and while these are nowhere near the performance of Hue they are vastly cheaper and my intention when using then was not for media controlled lighting but more atmospherics. The are embedded in shelving, not behind the TV. The ability to also try them for content driven lighting would be nice.

And what turns up in the new release (1.21) but support for “other”, great thanks. Just one problem - workjs great on my phone but on the nVidia Shield I cannot leave the room setup without the app exiting.

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I guess it crashes in setting up your entertainment area. After selecting your lights, do not use the left button on the remote to edit the positions of the lights, but please go down the list of your lights, and tap on Edit Entertainment Area. That will bring you to the left part of the screen. Now it should not crash anymore when you use the back button later on.

I will make a fix for this button bug.

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I will try that in a moment. It only happens after I have added non Hue bulbs.

Update: Also, I get bridge errors on both phone and nvdiia when trying to remove these Entertainment Areas.

Update 2: Yes, your suggestions works. Now, looks like my light strips are much too bright compared to the Hue play bars, perhaps a scale option somewhere for brightness, unless there is a way to do this already?

Thanks again!

Is there any progress regards Netflix, Amazon, etc. and external devices content?

I have tried with my fire tv cube 4k and am not able to get the lights to sync with any videos. Any update on this working?

First off, I would like to just throw some props towards the dev. All the engagement I have seen online from you has been very professional, attentive and polite. When I found out your age, I was even more impressed! I am amazed at the level-headedness displayed when responding to irate a-holes who seem to be too caught up with their own entitlements/appear too lazy to dig in and find out what features the app ACTUALLY claims to be able to handle (I know when I was at that age, I most definitely would not have been able to resist sprinkling in a bit of snark in my replies
).

Anyways, what brings me here is a question regarding using the sync with the Chromecast with Google TV. I gather the hardware itself isn’t ideal, but did notice a couple mentions that in regards to gaming, it works. Couple points I am curious about:

A) is this using a side loaded Stadia app?
B) if so, have you noticed whether the type of game (first-person shooter/sports/retro style/etc) has an impact on latency/performance of the light color response?

Thanks for your continued dedication to supporting the app, top-tier engagement with those of us who reach out, and everything you have done so far - keep up the great work!!

Does the app also work with kodi or not on android tv.

Hey! I use a freebox player (it is an Android TV) from Free internet provider.

I install the app and setup my scene. When i click on start synchronize, the freebox player restart.

Sorry for english, this is not my mother tongue.

Edit: force quit the app and restart correct the issue. But sync only work on preview images and not on the video.

Philips Hue changed their API in the latest bridge update for the Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip which broke Hue Essentials. I am working on a fix. See for more information: Gradient lightstrip not working anymore

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Ok but i dont have a hue gradient lightstrip. My scene is compose of 3 e27 bulb and one classic lightstrip. But i wait for your fix and come back to you after. Thanks!

Hi,

Tempted to buy the gradient strip and use this app to sync the lights. My device is an nvidia shield tv and I am using kodi to play my media.

Does this sync with 4k hdr (Dolbyvision) content (I don’t mean drm protected content) in kodi? Also, does mediacodec surface or hardware acceleration have to be disabled? What method is hue essentials using to pull screen data?

Hello,
I have successfully set up Sync with deCONZ and a Nvidia Shield TV. It also works fine with Philips Hue lamps. Now I have added a LIDL Livarno Lux LED Stripe (“modelid”: “HG06104A”). However, the colors are not synchronized with this one. It is only switched on at startup and switched off when exiting. Is it possible that it does not work because the stripe only supports the colormode “xy”, but not “hs”.
Is support for the Stripe even possible or should I rather get the Philips Hue White & Col. Amb. lightstrip instead?
Many thanks!
Steff

Edit:
As an addition: The LED stripe can otherwise be fully controlled in the Hue Essentials app, only the sync of the colors does not work in Entertainment.

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Thanks @steff75 for letting me know. I was able to reproduce the issue with the LIDL Livarno Lux LED Strip and it will be fixed in the next update. Version 1.22.2 on Android and version 1.16.1 on iOS.

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@Archimedes there may be some issues with Dolby Vision with Sync. Please let us know your experience here: Dolby Vision support for Sync on Android TV

Note that you need Hue Essentials version 1.22.0 or higher for the gradient strip to work.

@Anthony_Laulom there are some issues with Sync not working with videos on all types of Android TVs. Maybe your TV has the same issue. Do I understand correctly that Sync works in the menus and e.g. home screen of your TV, but as soon as you start a video it stops working?