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Purchasers of the Philips Hue "smart" ambient lighting system are finding out that the new firmware pushed out by the manufacturer has cut off access to previously-supported lightbulbs.
Philips uses ZigBee, which should mean any bulbs compatible with this standard will work with its Hue products. Not anymore. The firmware update removes this support, limiting this "open, global" standard to Philips' own bulbs and those it has designated as "Friends of Hue."
When owners complained that they had been given the old bait-and-switch on products they already paid for, Philips issued this statement:
While the Philips Hue system is based on open technologies we are not able to ensure all products from other brands are tested and fully interoperable with all of our software updates. For guaranteed compatibility you need to use Philips Hue or certified Friends of Hue products.
The Philips Hue is a premium-priced LED lighting system, but the rapid pace of LED efficiency gains has started to leave them behind. Cheaper competitors have started to significantly undercut Hue's pricing. Maybe this lockout is more about pricing protection than it is about quality protection
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 16 2015, @08:20AM
From my experience with Philips products, this is typical. They make good hardware, but they think they need to provide software to go with it. That's not their strength, their software is crappy, so why do they waste the time and effort?
An example from a different area: I have external Philips speakers for my Smartphone. They come with an app, which I originally thought I had to use in order to use the speakers. The app was just a disaster, and every release made it worse. As it turned out (to cut a long story short), I eventually realized that the speakers could be used just fine without the app. They really are good by themselves. So why did Philips bother producing a crappy app that gave them nothing but bad publicity? I mean, it's just weird.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:28AM
I have a Philips TV (and my work place does also). Moving through the EPG requires 5-20 button pushes per row. Yeah, that's right PER ROW (aka channel).
There's no way to remove channels from the EPG, even though the manual says there is (no, there is no option for it even though the manual says so).
The youtube on that tv is seriously fucking slow alsoo, once it starts to load the content, after which fixing a typo or clearing the search bar is fucking sloooooooow. Yeah, it's 2 years old model now, there's not going to be one single update anymore.
Fucking piece of shit. Will never buy Philips again. Once i get a new tv, i'll burn this one with hell fire.