Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking Without the Hue Bridge and Play HDMI Sync Box, your Play Gradient Lighstrip is just a normal, single-colour, uncustomisable light strip - and a costly one at that. With the Hue Bridge, you can at least change the colour of the light, create scenes and control it with your voice assistant of choice, but it’s the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box that’s required in order for the light strip to mirror the colours of your TV in real-time. I will also note that, when I first turned on the light strip after the initial installation, I noticed small sections (approximately 20cm in length) lighting up a blue-green hue, even when the colour was set to a static white. A cursory consultation with Dr Google revealed this issue isn’t uncommon, with reports found across blogs, Reddit, Twitter and other forums. According to a Twitter response by Philips Hue, the fault may be caused by bending the strip at a sharp angle - something that’s pretty damn hard to avoid when it needs to be bent in two places during mounting. While your light strip is covered under warranty, Philips will fix it at no extra charge. However, when you’re spending up to (or in excess of) $1,000 on the setup, faults like this really shouldn’t be happening. If you choose to go without the Sync Box altogether, the light strip can be programmed to display whatever colour (or colours) you want, whether static or dynamic. You can also create your own multi-colour scenes or opt for the pre-designed palettes in the app. I, for one, simply can’t justify spending almost $1,000 on a flawless smart TV light strip, let alone one with the issues that come with the Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip.