With most televisions, the experience of watching a film, TV show or sporting event ends at the screen's edges. There's the picture, then there's the TV frame, and that's your lot. This is no more than we've come to expect, of course, so most AV fans don't know any better. In truth, though, abruptly cutting off a TV's visuals at the border makes for an artificial and limiting experience.

Fortunately, Philips has a way to expand your TV viewing experience so that it doesn't just stop at your screen's edge but fills the whole living room. Called Ambilight, this exclusive technology at its simplest involves fitting small, ultra-efficient LEDs around the back edges of the television that fire coloured light out onto the wall behind.

This light spreads way beyond the frame around the screen and expands the TV's visual 'staging' and presence. It makes the viewing experience more immersive and potentially less tiring – especially if you're watching in a fairly dark room – since your eyes are no longer having to deal with a bright rectangle of picture abruptly standing out against a darker backdrop.

Our own experiences with Ambilight, together with years of highly favourable customer satisfaction polling, have proved that it's more than just a fun talking point at dinner parties. The reality is that for many AV fans, it elevates the viewing experience – and once you've lived with it, there's no going back.

Depending on the level of Philips TV that you go for, Ambilight can cast its light pools from two, three or even all four of the screen's sides. Even better, though, is the way Philips now offers a huge amount of control over how Ambilight works. This enables it to bring its magic to more viewing scenarios and room setups – as well as potentially even joining forces with external lighting systems. 

You can, for instance, have Ambilight emit a single colour of your choice to create a specific mood, and the TV can even adjust the way this colour is reproduced to compensate for the colour of your walls. Alternatively, you have Ambilight track the colour content of the pictures you're watching. The accuracy with which this real-time tracking follows the location and the colour tone of whatever is playing on the screen is uncanny. You can also adjust the speed with which the system tracks the image content, depending on whether you want an invigorating or relaxing experience. Or you can tweak the brightness and intensity with which Ambilight casts out its light, depending on whether you want an ambient or aggressively 'connected' experience. 

The latest Philips TVs even allow their Ambilight features to join forces with the optional Ambilight plus Hue external lighting kit, where individual Hue bulbs can be used to extend your chosen Ambilight effect throughout your entire room.

The best way to get a proper sense of what is possible with Ambilight is to explore different scenarios of how it could enhance your home entertainment experience. So if you're watching a high-octane action film, for instance, you might find that excitement levels are boosted by setting Ambilight to its vibrant Vivid mode. Whereas with a gentle romantic comedy or drama, you might find that the relatively mild, reined in Comfort Mode creates the most appropriate ambience.

If you're watching a football match or some other fast-moving sports event, setting Ambilight to aggressively follow/react to the action, alongside a vivid colour and brightness setting, can make you feel much more part of the action. If you combine Ambilight with an external Hue system, you'll actually start to feel like you're right there in the stadium. Gamers get their own dramatic Ambilight setting, too, designed to make the gaming experience feel more intense, immediate and involving – especially when combined with an external Philips Hue lighting system.

Ambilight doesn't even have to have a picture signal to work with, to transform your home entertainment. Philips now provides an Ambilight Music Mode that can add a whole new dimension to your favourite songs by partnering them with mesmerisingly dynamic and colourful light shows capable of picking up on the beat and mood of the music. 

Traditionally, there's only been one problem with Philips' Ambilight technology – getting hold of it. For years Philips Ambilight TVs have only been available in a select group of territories. Happily, though, Philips TV is now fully up and running in Australia and offer a wide range of Ambilight TVs. These include the PUT7374, PUT8265, OLED804 and OLED805, which are currently available from Harvey Norman. Early in 2022, a new generation of Ambilight TV will land in Australia, including the stunning OLED935 Ambilight TV with Bowers & Wilkins speakers built-in.  

So if the words and pictures on this page have convinced you that it's time to raise your TV viewing experience to something exceptional, then click the link below. You'll enter a whole new world of light and colour, the like of which you've never seen before.

Visit Philips Ambilight for more information