Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have a 65" Sony 850E, not the best, but middle of the pack for LED TVs. I was considering updating it as it is 3 years old and the newer TV ar a bit sharper and have new technology that upscales the picture a bit better. However after reading some reviews and watching a few YouTubes on improving your home viewing experience, the one thing that was touched on over and over was the reduction of eye strain when viewing a bright TV in a dark room. Digging further into the subject, most 'Experts' recommended using TV Backlights. Looking a bit more I found that there were a lot of choices out there, ranging from around $10 - $300+. After cutting through the price vs. performance of various products, it seemed to me that the static lights that either were just a single color or you had to use a remote or app to change the colors did not relieve the eye strain as well as active lights. Active lights are different because they use input from either the HDMI port or an external source, such as a camera to 'synch' the lights response to the active picture being shown on the screen. Philips Hue is a very good system that uses a HDMI hub to capture the incoming digital information to ensure that the light reacted quickly and smoothly to whatever was on screen. This option while fast and almost decorative, can be expensive as all parts, the lights and the hub are sold separately, the upside is that all Hue products can be synchronized to work together, meaning that your Hue light bulbs can be synched with you TV lighting system to have a more immersive viewing and gaming experience. Where they fall a bit flat, other than the cost, for me is the fact that your Streaming Apps that work directly on your smart TV will not trigger the lights synching with your screen, as it is not sending anything through the HDMI ports. Yes you can get a ROKU or Fire Stick, but then, what's the point of having a smart TV? Govee push the limit and the price point a but differently. They decided to have a small HD camera 'watch' the screen and respond based on what it 'saw'. Of course the other difference between Hue and Govee is install times and methods. Hue is basically a Plug & Play solution, where you just plug your cable, game console, blu ray player into Hue's HDMI hub and the hub into the TV, download the app onto your phone/tablet, setup the standalone lights and your done. Govee is a bit more involved, I would first remove everything from the box and plug the lights, camera and power into the small hub, make sure the lights all are on. Next, look at the little arrow on the LED strip and which way it runs, as it comes as a single segmented strip, use some painters tape to arrange the strip around the rear of your TV. This will make adjustments easier so that when you strip off the plastic covering the adhesive backing, you will be more confident about it's placement. You want to try to make sure the top and bottom part of the LED strip is as even as possible. There are four corner breaks on the strip, where it can be gently twisted and bent to provide better placement. Next you are supposed to place the camera on either the top middle or bottom middle of the TV, the bracket on the camera has a real good 3M adhesive already in place. I however did not want to stick anything to the top of my TV permanently and I have and XBox Kinect already up top on this type of bracket https://tinyurl.com/y687xus9 So instead I used a small Command strip hook and loop on the top of my Kinect and on the camera and stuck it on top of my Kinect. I believe raising the camera height in this manner helps the camera to 'see' more of the screen and avoids issues of color responses that I have seen others complain about. After connecting the camera, LED strip and power to the hub, I used the 7 orange spongey squares to my screen, three on each side, especially the corners an the last one at the bottom middle of the screen. I downloaded the App on my Iphone and inputted access for my WiFi. Small concern here, most phones, tablets have 5ghz capability and benefit from the speed and less crowded bandwidth. However, Govee will only recognize 2.4ghz, so in order to use the WiFi connection, you will have to go into your phone setting and change the WiFi access to 2.4ghz, it will not connect otherwise. After you get your Govee app to see the backlights, you can now turn them on or off, change how and what colors the lights display, brightness and saturation of the lights as well as set 'scenes' for mood lighting. It also features a Game mode, which seems to force a faster response for the camera, where as the Movie mode, lets the colors transition more smoothly and seems to flow with the picture displayed. Next, with the TV off, you go into the settings icon, on the top right portion of the app and then choose, 'Calibration'. Just follow the instructions and try to make sure that you get all 7 orange squares within the 5 points that they give you. Also note, if you tend to watch black and white or monochrome older films and shows, the camera gets confused and will display the lights more towards the purple\blue end of the light spectrum, more purple as the screen shows blacks. There were complaints from early version that the device did not correctly interpret greens or orange colors, that seems to either have been fixed or the simple fact that I have my camera mounted about 7" above the screen and the newer H6199 version has a 1080p camera. Final thoughts, after having these lights installed and active for over 2 weeks I think that I can honestly say, they do seem to decrease eye strain as I have had less headaches after late night movie watching. The screen seems bigger as the lights give the illusion that the action on the screen is flowing beyond it. It does add another dimension to gaming as in gaming mode the lighting changes as the gameplay changes creating a more immersive playing venue. While I will not take away anything from Philip Hue's bright and fast reactive system, $70 dollars is quite a bit of difference from Hue's costing $149 for the two light gameplay with hub base kit, and another $419 Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box. If you have the spare change laying around and you don't care about reactive lighting for your TVs built in smart apps, the Philips Hue is the better system.