Hueblog: More and more users complain: Ambilight and Philips Hue with problems

More and more users complain: Ambilight and Philips Hue with problems

Not everything from one hand

Actually, it sounds pretty great: you can easily expand the Ambilight of your Philips TV with Philips Hue light sources. You don't even need the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box to do this, instead you just click through the TV menu a bit and you're ready to go.

What sounds so simple, however, currently seems to be causing big problems again. Not only in the social networks, but also in my email inbox, an increasing number of messages from affected users are coming in. This time, however, it is not about small delays or errors in colour reproduction, but about the complete connection between the Philips TV and the Philips Hue lamps.


Is a new firmware for the Hue Bridge causing problems?

Now comes a guess on my part: Philips Hue has made numerous changes to its API in recent weeks that are leading to the problems. For example, the developer of iConnectHue writes:

If you upgrade your Hue bridge firmware, you can't use the Gradient Lightstrip's individual segments, iConnectHue detects and informs now about this and will switch back to single colour mode (we will issue an update once Philips lets 3rd parties use the new API for the strip).

Now you would think that a company should be able to manage not to disrupt functionality elsewhere with an update. Unfortunately, Philips Hue and Philips TVs have nothing to do with each other. Our favourite light sources are developed by Signify, the TVs come from the company TPVision. And in the past, it has become clear that communication between the two manufacturers is not always smooth. For me, this is inexplicable, because an incredible number of possibilities remain unused.

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Check your local Philips Hue Online Store for availability of Hue products in your country. There you will also find all the technical information and prices.



In den letzten Jahren habe ich mich zu einem echten Experten in Sachen Hue & HomeKit entwickelt. Mittlerweile habe ich über 50 Lampen und zahlreiche Schalter im Einsatz. In meinem kleinen Blog teile ich meine Erfahrungen gerne mit euch.

Comments 14 replies

  1. I’m still not able to sync my hue lights and Philips tv. Everything is in order in the settings, but doesn’t work. Any workaround? I have an Oled series 804 and 6 hue lights color ambiance

    1. Same here with Oled 9002 serie with 2 play 2 go and 1 lightstrip.

      At the price of all of this it feels like I’ve been robbed

  2. I’ve been experiencing the same problem with my Philips OLED 803 but it has been solved from today thanks to a serendipity.
    Was plugging a PS5 on it and I unplugged the TV from the plug by mistake.
    When I plugged it back, had that Android screen for a few moment and when it disappeared, all my Hue lights that are synchronised to the TV came on with the Ambilight + Hue working again.
    Hope that helps! 🙂
    Keep us posted.

    1. Will try this evening and let you know… Really hope it will be so easy to solve… Miss my set-up a lot.

    2. Yes please Andrea, keep us posted.
      So far so good on my side, everything just works fine since then.

  3. Incredible to tell, but your workaround is working!!

    Ok here what happened to me:
    – unplugged the tv for about 5 mins
    – plugged back in, and waited the start-up sequence
    – went inside ambilight+hue menu in settings, it told me bridge not found even if the light were responding
    – made another pairing with the bridge, and suddenly all my light configurations were there already ready

    Done, now it works and it’s still working (2 days of normal use).

    Good thinking buying a ps5 to solve this issue hehe.

    Fabrice, if you ever come to Italy I will offer you a dinner 🙂

  4. Running a OLED984 TV with a pair of TAW6205, sound works perfectly fine. But everytime when I activate the external ambilight it is only working for a short period of time, than out of a sudden it lose the ambilight pairing and the light switches to follow audio. This happens also when I change the volume using the remote control of the TV. Switching everyting off and on solves the issue for a few minutes.

    Any ideas how to solve that? Latest firmware is installed (TV and TAW), of course. I also repeated the setup couple of times.

    1. Finally found the reason. I’m using AirTies 4920 to provide the house with WiFi, looks like these device are not handling multicast traffic properly even when the signal strength and throughput are very good.

      Since I created a separate WiFi using a Fritzbox everyhting is stable.

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