How To Set Up Philips Blu Ray Player

Philips Hue Sync Box finally catches upward with 120Hz TVs – but with a 4K catch

(Image credit: Philips)

The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is a wonderful bit of dwelling house entertainment kit, offering a connector between your smart TV, smart lights, and various media devices and consoles – simply it's only now that it'due south getting support for 120Hz passthrough to assist brandish those PS5 games and Xbox Series X games in the highest refresh charge per unit possible.

While the Sync Box formerly was but able to support 60Hz images from connected consoles and 4K Blu-ray players, that figure is going up to 120Hz in an upcoming software update, so that any Sync Box possessor can benefit from the upgrade. The update is set to come "Fall 2022" – so likely September or October this twelvemonth – and comes amid a number of Philips Hue upgrades including Spotify integration with colour-changing smart bulbs.

But 120Hz is increasingly the desirable refresh rate for high-stop gamers with a PS5 or Xbox Series X panel – and while relatively few games support 120Hz, it'due south a good spec to have for the titles that do, ensuring polish images far across what was possible on earlier consoles.

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There are, however, a few limitations to this 120Hz upgrade. We're told that "Users will be able to update their sync box to exist uniform with the newest game consoles' 120Hz support, ensuring competitive players to be on top of the game with the highest refresh rate. The sync box is able to support 120Hz with an image resolution of 1080p and 1440p. Alternatively, if the highest image resolution is preferred, the current sync box as well continues to support a 4K image resolution up to a refresh rate of 60Hz."

So, the option is betwixt 120Hz gameplay at 1080p/1440p, or 60Hz at 4K resolution. That means y'all won't become the maximum 4K/120Hz functioning possible on the latest game consoles and 120Hz 4K TVs, given the Sync Box doesn't support the HDMI 2.ane input specification to allow for it.

Analysis: A halfway firm to HDMI 2.one

We look this software update is something of a halfway firm, improving the support available earlier Philips is ready to release a new hardware iteration with HDMI ii.1 ports built in. The current Sync Box was released in Oct 2022, so information technology'due south very possible nosotros could run into some other version before long – within the adjacent yr, that is – though nosotros're asking Philips for clarification on this point, and wouldn't be surprised if the hardware took a little longer than that still.

If you're after that HDMI 2.1 spec, and so, it's probably all-time to brand sure your panel-continued Sync Box isn't reducing the capabilities of your HDMI 2.1 TV.

What is HDMI 2.1?

You might also want to cheque out the capabilities of HDMI on PS5.

Henry is a freelance technology journalist. Before going freelance, he spent more than three years at TechRadar reporting on TVs, projectors and smart speakers equally the website's Home Movie theatre Editor – and has been interviewed live on both BBC World News and Channel News Asia, discussing the future of transport and 4K resolution televisions respectively. Equally a graduate of English Literature and persistent theatre enthusiast, he'll usually exist found forcing Shakespeare puns into his technology articles, which he thinks is what the Bard would have wanted. Bylines likewise include Edge, T3, and Little White Lies.