Govee (or similar) responsive backlights as a replacement for ambilight?

[Gray2233]

My old TV recently gave up the ghost, which was a Philips model with Ambilight. After some wrangling I was offered either a Hisense 65U6KQTUK, or a partial refund for less than the Hisense model. After having a friend with the kit come over to calibrate the replacement, I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the screen in most respects so no issues there. Money was a tad tight or I'd have aimed to pay the extra for something more premium, but I'm not at all disappointed with the end result fortunately.

That said, I am finding myself missing the reactive backlight offered by the Ambilight so have been looking at alternatives. Govee is one of the more prominent companies that deliver a camera system for a reasonable cost, reviews look to be quite good but I figured I'd check in here to see if anyone has any experience of using such systems?

There is the option of sticking with Philips, but their solution is a lot more expensive and only works via a HDMI signal/plugin box which isn't ideal for my usage.

Opinions welcome, I'm happy to spend £100 or so but not beyond that.

 

[Gray2233]

I use a Govee T2 with my TV and find it perfectly adequate. I doubt it’s as responsive as Ambilight, which I’ve never experienced, but it’s an easy to set up solution that works well

Damn, that was fast! Appreciate the response.

 

[Gray2233]

I ended up ordering the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite for £60 after looking at a few reviews, it should be here Tuesday.

I'll write up some impressions once I've had time to play with it for anyone interested.

 

[Gray2233]

The only colour bias light you should use is 6500K. It's the law.

 

[Gray2233]

Got these set up earlier, they're obviously not as responsive as ambilight, but still do a good enough job. The colour is a little off, I should be able to resolve that with calibration when I have the time.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the T3 Lite tbh, I'd initially been eyeballing the T2 as it's technically superior. I decided to take the chance given the T3 was almost half the price, I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking to try the tech out.

 

[Gray2233]

There are some good YouTube videos out there regarding calibration. The main thing to do is reduce the colour saturation and brightness by quite a bit as that helps match the colours to the TV

After playing around it's already showing colour improvement, there was a pretty heavy red bias to deal with.

 

[Gray2233]

other than going with the diy route with a raspberry pi and capture card, govee seems really good and simple alternative and often on sale too.

I'm happy with mine, got £5 off the Amazon price due to a sign up voucher on the Govee website too.

For the sake of £50-60 for the T3 Lite you can't go wrong tbh.

 

[Gray2233]

ever since I seen the lite announced I wanted to try it seems like its in the middle compared to the big gap from the t1 and t2 (if i got the models right) how is the colour accuracy for you ive noticed some say its good and some not and people often mod the ir camera thing.

It's working fine for me, I have seen the odd reports that screen types can have an effect but fortunately that's not been a problem with my U6.

The colours by default were a little iffy, but the Govee calibration videos linked above really helped and it's pretty damn close now.

I can't see anything ever beating ambilight tbh, but it's close enough that I'm more than happy with it. If you're on the fence you could always order from Amazon and just return it if you don't get on with it?

 

[Gray2233]

Got mine set up. Its wall mounted and its not the type of mount you can pull out and get behind so put the tv on its old stand. Top Gun was on at the time, the yee ha Jesters dead bit followed by buzzing the tower and it was working really well. Finished with the set up and got the TV back on the wall and went through the calibration with the app but feel its made it worse! Doing the set up on the app I couldnt really see the edges of the TV where the sticky pads were so just had to best guess it, even going fullscreen on the app didnt help much. Its very biased on the green and more so on the red. Decided to use light sabre fight to test it. Green is heavy on the left and it doesn't seem to picking much up on the right. Pic is a screenshot of a video so quality is poor. Bit more messing about needed. What do people think is the best material to test run it with?

There's some links to the Govee "calibration" videos earlier in the thread that really helped for me.

Using the information gained from them I used some of the Philips Ambilight youtube videos to colour match/track which got me as close as damnit.

There's actually a black bar setting in the APP that might help in some cases too, I've found it a little hit and miss. On my end there was a heavy red bias that needed to be toned down, it is a bit of a faff in all honesty and it took me a good 3-5 calibration attempts to nail things. The cam view when looking at the red lights via the calibration video is a bit of a PITA, I actually found it easier to only use the bottom and mid point sticky blocks as you can see the screen just fine on the upper with the Govee (red point section) video.

 

[Gray2233]

Cheers. I think it may have been too dark when I did the initial calibration and also did it with the TV off, maybe be better if its emitting some light. WFH today so may give it a another go this afternoon.

It is a fiddle but if you follow the videos/guidelines you'll get there.

Absolutely worth it in the end imo.