Hue's new TV sync app is preposterously expensive

Got a Samsung TV? Got Hue smart lights? Want those lights to sync up with your TV, giving you whole-room bias lighting? Cool, can do! Signify, the company spun off from Philips to run the Hue brand, has offered a box that sat between your HDMI source and the TV, intercepting and analyzing the video signals received to send commands to designated lights. But the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box was pretty pricey at $250 for what's a neat effect. But hardware like that isn't necessarily cheap to make.

The bigger problem has been that more and more of us aren't even using any HDMI components to get video to our TVs — we're increasingly just watching from apps on the TV, and there's no HDMI signal for the Sync Box to analyze. Never fear, for there's now a Philips Hue Sync TV app for Samsung TVs that will analyze everything on the screen from any source and send commands to the appropriate lights.

There's just one catch: it costs $129.99.

There's actually another catch: it's only compatible with 2022-and-newer Samsung QLED TVs in the Q60 range or higher. It obviously takes some processing power to do this in real time, but that's still a heck of a limitation. But hey, it works with 8K TVs and HDR content, so that's neat.

But man, $130 for an app to sync your multiple $40+ smart lights with your TV? That's asking a lot.

Source: Signify