One of the most unique TV accessories we’ve seen in a while, the Lightpack adds ambient backlighting to TVs and monitors, illuminating the wall behind the panel and the space around it. The best part? It displays the same colors that appear on the screen, making it look like the show is literally exploding out of the TV, essentially expanding your viewing range.
Not only will it turn watching movies and TV shows into an entirely new experience, the unique lighting it adds will help protect your eyes if you enjoy watching your programs with the lights off, too. This happens because the ambient light reduces the difference between the dark and bright scenes appearing on the screen, easing up on the tension that your eye muscles experience.
Billed as a “content-driven lighting system,” Lightpack attaches to the back of your display, providing the ambient illumination in tune with what displays on the screen. The catch? You can’t just slap it onto a TV hooked up to a cable box and have it work right out. Instead, anything you watch needs to pass through the Prismatik software on a computer, smartphone or console running Windows, OS X, Linux, or Android in order for the system to run. That means, it will work with your Steam games, downloaded movies, GameStick, and, pretty much, anything that uses a computer as a video signal source. But if you’re watching straight from a Plair, playing games off an Xbox One, or watching TV over an antenna, you won’t get to enjoy the fancy lights.
The setup can work with all displays sized between 10 and 50 inches. For anything bigger, you’ll need to use either two or three Lightpacks to cover the entire area around the screen.
Originally a successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign, the Lightpack is now a retail product, priced at $119.