Meet the TV with a picture bigger than its screen
Say ‘halo’ to Philips Ambilight. It’s like surround-sound… for your eyes
The best way to see what Philips Ambilight can do is to turn it off. No, really. Turn it off and see how dark and lifeless your living room becomes.
That’s exactly what an exclusive group of Stuff and What Hi-Fi? readers discovered when they came to a special event we hosted with Philips earlier this month…
Ambilight adds another dimension to your viewing by shining light from LEDs on the back of the TV onto the wall behind it. These lights use the TV’s internal processing to replicate the colours you’re seeing on-screen in real time – which makes the picture appear to expand far beyond the bezel. It reduces eye fatigue, immerses you more in the on-screen action and makes the screen appear larger than it really is.
And then you turn it off, and you really wish you hadn’t. It’s the sort of thing you only do once in a while, when you have skeptical friends over. (They don’t stay skeptical for long.)
AmbiLux uses nine tiny DLP pico-projectors to take the concept to another level – actually reproducing part of the real TV picture on the wall behind the set.
Whichever option you choose, it’s all tweakable. Set the strength and halo-size of the effect, calibrate it to your wall colour, tell it to respond in a different way to different types of content, and more. All Ambilight-equipped sets have Android on board for an instantly intuitive experience, and they’re all powered by quad-core processors – so you can say goodbye to lag.
It’s TV turned up to 11. Time to do your eyes – and your living-room wall – a favour.
StuffTV
