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Philips WiZ Sync Box & Backlight (Quick Look) - Cinematic Thrill At Home
This light system is designed to increase the immersive qualities of consuming entertainment at home, by offering reactive lighting.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
It's been quite a while, but we initially took a look at both the HDMI Sync Box from Philips Hue and the 8K follow-up HDMI Sync Box from Hue, which of course had HDMI 2.1 and therefore allowed for 8K resolution to run through or 4K at 120Hz."
"Now that was expensive, it continues to be expensive to this day.
So if you want something that is from the Hue family-esque, but from a more budget-friendly sub-brand, you could get something from Wiz.
Because we've taken a look at Wiz, that is also a Signify sub-brand, but it offers many of the same functionalities, but at lower prices in general."
"This is the HDMI Sync Box with TV backlight, and it does the majority of the same things that an HDMI Sync Box 8K from Hue does.
Because you put in regular power, then you have HDMI in from your source and HDMI out to another source, and then you plug in the light bar itself, which comes with this one-time use sticky tape on here, which you attach to the back of your TV."
"By then running your HDMI through this box, the box will then read what is going on in the image and then make a custom lighting solution based on the signals that it is getting.
That means that if you run your PS5 or Xbox Series or even your Apple TV, depending on what you do mainly for your TV, well, then you'll get a custom lighting scheme based on whatever is going on on the TV."
"So if you really want that sort of spelt out properly, so let's say that you are a character on your PS5 and you enter a dimly lit cave with some water that is reflecting blue light onto the cave roof, for instance, beautiful scene, such as in Uncharted 4, well, then it will create those ripple effects on the wall behind it so that it creates an immersive extra effect."
"That's something that Philips have done with their Ambilight lineup of TVs for a while, and it's something that, again, the Hue Sync Box have done, but depending on what kind of pricing tier that you get, depending on the size of your TV, there are two sizes, so this is 55 to 65 and can be used on either one, and you can also get a larger one if your TV is more than 65 inches, well, then you'll get much of the same effect and it works in mainly the same way."
"It's really cool, and, again, if you want to compare prices, which we very rarely do because it might not be completely applicable to all of the countries that watch this video, but as far as we could tell, this will set you back like a quarter of the price of just the Sync Box without the light bar that you get with it, so that is obviously a fantastic deal."
"Now, there's just one major hassle with this.
This set only supports HDMI 2.0, not 2.1.
What does that mean in practice?
Well, it means, in theory, that you are limited to 4K at 60 hertz, not 4K 120 and not 8K, so if you think about it, what does that mean?
That means that if you have a game that runs at 4K 120, then you won't be able to display it like that, but which games actually do that?
There are very few of them."
"They do exist, particularly in the indie scene where the graphics, in general, aren't as taxing, meaning they can push the frame rates and the resolutions high, but even in a magically optimized game like Forza Horizon 5, which recently released on PS5, well, then that is 4K 60 hertz because it only goes to 60 FPS, and it also does that with Dolby Vision and HDR 10 Plus intact."
"There's also four distinct settings in here, which I found really cool, which you can use with the app, cinematic, vibrant, relaxation, and rhythmic, which doesn't really determine what the lighting does as much as the volume and the rhythm, the sequencing of those lights, depending on what you're actually in for, depending also, I guess, what kind of game you want and what kind of lighting show you want at the back of your TV."
"It also can cue in with other Wiz lights that you might have in your home, so if you've chosen Wiz as your main smart light provider for your home, well, then it works very well in tandem with that.
There is one thing, is that even though this is Signify, which also distributes cue, it's a shame that there isn't really more cross-compatibility with these ecosystems, but still, again, if you use Wiz, this will work seamlessly with that, and the Wiz app is actually really good."
"It's especially gotten good over the past couple of years, so for the price that they're asking, it's hard not to recommend it.
You just have to be sure that you won't need the HDMI 2.1 features, and even so, that you won't need them for a couple of years still while you're using this."
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