FabianFor me, the migration from one of my two old Hue Bridges to the new Hue Bridge Pro went smoothly. But that’s probably only because I didn’t pair my somewhat outdated Philips TV with Ambilight with Philips Hue. Because it is precisely this function that causes problems with the Hue Bridge Pro.
I have now received several emails on the subject and have also discovered numerous posts on social media. The statements are always the same: after setup, the Hue Bridge Pro cannot be found in the Ambilight+Hue menu of the TV.
It was already known that the Ambilight+Hue function was discontinued several years ago and is no longer available in newer Philips TVs. What is surprising, however, is that the function is not compatible with the new Hue Bridge Pro on older TVs.
Why the Hue Bridge Pro does not work with Ambilight+Hue
I see two main problems with older TVs with Ambilight+Hue in combination with the new Hue Bridge Pro. The new bridge has a different model number, and this identification would first have to be taught to Philips TVs. In addition, since the beginning of August, an encrypted https connection has been required for connection to external apps; simple http is no longer sufficient. This could also mean that the Hue Bridge Pro is not visible to Ambilight TVs.
One thing is clear: adjustments are necessary. But why doesn’t Philips just make them? This brings us to the next dilemma: Philips has nothing to do with the whole story. Philips Hue belongs to Signify, while the TV division belongs to TP Vision. We already know that these two companies have not been communicating properly for years.
There is no real solution to the problem. I have already read several comments recommending reconnecting the desired Ambilight+Hue lights to the old Hue Bridge. However, this is hardly practical.
My recommendation at this point is therefore: if you want to continue using Ambilight+Hue on your old Philips TV, you should not switch to the new Hue Bridge Pro for the time being.
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This is a big shame if they don’t carry this feature forward but I understand it’s out of their hands….
I always choose Philips TVs because of ambilight but since they announced they’ll no longer work with the hue hub for newer versions I’ll probably not buy another Philips TV.
Their lack of Google TV even on some oled models is another reason…
I managed to get a workaround with the old hue bridge and a separate network. But it would have been nice if they had just told us at the beginning. That would have made me wait with the Bridge Pro.
It doesn’t matter if you buy a new ambilight tv. You still need the hue sync box.
I wonder why it takes so long for them to release android and appletv apps. It would make it a lot easier for many people.
Hue Sync cannot just be released as a “normal app” since it must be running in the background all the time and be given access to what other apps shows on the screen. That definitely is not possible to do on an Apple TV without getting Apple’s blessing and access to private APIs, and I doubt it is possible on Android TV either for an app distributed through the Google Play store (a built-in app distributed by the TV manufacturer may be able to do it though).
Interesting, I was keen to upgrade just for the advantage of faster times and generally better, but all our TVs are ambilight and the main one has about 5 hue lights around it too so a disaster of it stops working.
I agree with the other poster, Titan software is rubbish so their move away from Google is bad, the last Philips I got stop working dead on three years so actually might look at a sync box and mount the led behind a normal TV for my next upgrade, sever the link on Philips TVs if they’re no longer supporting this feature.
I have 2 ambilight tv’s, one of them didn’t really use the ambilight+hue feature, but for the other, I just plugged the old bridge back in and set up for that bridge to only control the lights in that room. I did find however, that the TV wouldn’t find the bridge, after several attempts I powered off the bridge pro and tried again which worked. Not sure if that’s coincidental or not.
To be fair it’s all working well, the only negative is that I have 2 bridges installed now instead of 1.
I don’t have a bridge pro yet so I cannot confirm this, but my guess is local DNS of bridge pro is different from bridge v2. Signify is using mDNS as one of the ways to discover bridges on local network according to their documentation on developer website.
I was about to replace my bridge to get the presence detection. But I can’t live without ambilight+hue.
I will wait.