Ambient Backlight Display System

Brand: Woodenshark
Model: LightpackUSB
EAN: 5060321990027
Category: Home & Office
Price: n/a  (38 customer reviews)
Dimension: 1.10 x 3.10 x 3.10 inches
Shipping Wt: 0.76 pounds
Average Rating: 2.9 out of 5 stars
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Product Description

Lightpack lightens your computer or TV screen to strengthen the presence effect. The device needs to be mounted on your TV or computer screen and to be connected to your PC, Mac or HTPC via USB. The software analyses what you currently have on the screen, be it a movie, a game, or anything else, and sends this information to the Lightpack device which in turn lightens the surface behind the screen with matching colours using the RGB-LEDs available within the Lightpack device.

- Easy to setup

You only need to attach LEDs according to one of the variants in our illustrated guide and then to click a button with the according Constellation in Prismatik.

- Driver-free

There is no need in any additional drivers for main operational systems. Lightpack will be automatically identified as a standard HID device on the first connect.

- Annoying-free adhesive

Lightpack is attached to your display with the help of adhesive layer applied on all necessary elements. We have chosen the strongest glue foam we could find. If you are planning to shift the LEDs often, we included additional set of adhesive strips and simple accessories for cable management to the package for you.

- Package includes

Lightpack device, microUSB cable, 10 RGB-LED strips, Power adapter with US, UK and EU plugs, User manual, Additional adhesive strips.

Features

  • Lightpack - content-driven lighting system for your TV or computer display. Lightens your computer or to screen to strengthen the presence effect.
  • Smart backlight: matching colors of PC/TV and backlighting
  • Works with any HDMI source: media players, gaming consoles, receivers, computers, etc.
  • Takes 1 minutes to setup - all necessary mount accessories included
  • Guarantee: - 1 year - 30 days from the date of purchase for return

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Top Reviews

Good quality hardware, supports the majority of video content
by John (4 out of 5 stars)
October 13, 2015

I am a long-time lover of colored lights and was happy years ago when Philips came out with AmBX. Immersing yourself in your games by having the light extended beyond your monitor was beyond cool and made the gameplay experience magical. I have logged hundreds of hours playing games with both native AmBX effects and emulated AmBX effects. Due to marketing and technical issues, AmBX was a flop and there are no longer any new devices that can support AmBX. My Philips AmBX rig finally bit the dust after years of service and I was dismayed that there were no viable replacements. That is until the crowdfunded Woodenshark came out with a slightly revised product.

After the first price drop, I was elated to get this and try it out. I have read many dismayed comments from those who funded the original campaign for this product. However, it looks like they have gotten their act together and are now shipping a high quality product. The box this came in had a creative design and intuitive instructions. You basically tape the LED modules to the back of you monitor (or TV), hook them into a control box and then plug the control box into your computer using USB. There is also a power brick you have to plug in (which comes with beautiful power plug adaptors for most major countries).

The instructions direct you to a website where you must install software called Prismatik. I am using Windows 7, so I will write about this version of the software. Prismatik has a pretty intuitive design and is easy to figure out. Unfortunately, this is where things start to go downhill. The software to control these beautiful lights does not work when you turn your computer off/on/sleep. If you put your PC to sleep, the lights stay on. One helpful user named Daell wrote a lightweight program called "Lightpack_auto_on_off.exe" to fix this problem. Since installing this program, the lights turn on and off beautifully.

The most significant problem with these lights is the compatibility. This was also the biggest problem facing AmBX. There are two basic approaches to processing video content for the lights. The first approach is where you can have the source of the video also control the lights (most Lightpack installations). The second approach is where you have an independent feed of video to an independent device which just controls the lights (a HDMI splitter and Raspberry Pi device).

If you use the second approach, these lights should work with ALL content. The trick is to get a certified HDMI splitter that maintains copyright protection, and buying/setting up a Raspberry Pi. This is the best, but the most complicated setup. This type of setup is required if you want to use these lights with your Xbox, PlayStation, HD Cable box or Blu-ray player.

If you use the first approach, these lights can be made to work with most content. To get the content to work with more content, I enabled the developer options and enabled both of the direct X hooks. Unfortunately, I was having about 20 FPS on my desktop. To avoid this, I turned off Areo effects and my FPS went up to a respectable 90 or so.

With these settings I tried playing several games and trying a few videos. I watched a few hours of video on Netflix and the content looked great! It tracked very well with the video. The light areas of the video cause the wall to be washed in a beautiful white light and blue sky had a very nice extension when present. For most video content the lights and darks are more evident than the colors. With video games, vivid color is much more common. The lights work very well with all non-video content on your screen.

I fired up several video games to try out these lights:

FTL

System Shock 1 (GoG version)

System Shock 2 (GoG version)

Supreme Commander 2

BioShock 2

Counter-Strike GO

Tomb Raider (2013)

Unreal Tournament 3:Black Edition

Mass Effect 2

FTL and System Shock 1 did not work at all. All of the other games worked very well and had great effects. The blue, green and red effects were outstanding both of these games. The first person games gained more from the effects then the mile-high RTS of Supreme Commander. Performance did not seem to have a major impact from the software running (perhaps a 10% hit).

With the games where the lights do not work, they will either go silent or to their minimum level depending on what setting you have in Prismatik (ambient light mode or FX mode). The lights can also be setup with a static color just to give you some background light.

Compared to AmBX, these lights are much more responsive and have a more detailed resolution. They still lag slightly behind the video (you can increase the polling frequency if you want to take the performance hit). It is hard to say, but there is probably about a 100 ms delay in updating of the lights in my setup. For most effects, this is an acceptable delay.

Overall, I am very happy with these lights and am very glad to see the wall wash video extension market continue. This device gives a very immersive FPS experience for the vast majority of PC games. I hope that Prismatik support will continue so that it will work with future operating systems and with more video content.

PS: I posted a short video demo showing the effects of lights.

June 2016 Update:

I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Lights are still working well (no LEDs are burned out). I am now using the free software Ambilight instead of Prismatik. It is much better at detecting if the PC is asleep or not. It also seems to have less of a performance impact. If you pay money for Playclaw (a program that allows you to live-stream any game), Ambilight can tap into Playclaws feed and will allow the Lightpack lights to work with even more games. I did not pay for this since I found most games I play have a borderless window mode and thus were supported.
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A game-changer
by Some dude on the internet (5 out of 5 stars)
February 6, 2017

Wow, this thing took a bit longer to set up than it should have, and the main software is crappy. (doesn't work well in several games) I stumbled on the "unofficial" fork (on reddit) and it's freaking awesome. This purchase was something of a lark for me, but I couldn't be happier with the results. Works outstanding in ultrawide (21:9) too.
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Defective product, customer service ignored me
by Naimseller (1 out of 5 stars)
April 6, 2015

Bought 2 lightpacks. One worked (left on photo) and one did not (right of TV which is not switched on). Product arrived defective as power adapter did not work. I emailed the customer service 8 times and got no reply. So I'm left with a defective product and my emails are being ignored. Very disappointing. I would avoid buying from wooden shark LLC
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When working these are great. However
by Bay Bunny (3 out of 5 stars)
March 8, 2017

When working these are great. However, there is an issue with quality control for these LEDs.

Out the packs I bought many of the LEDs were defective with issues. Such as not displaying a certain color.

Or loose wires make the LEDs go out. Finally, the LEDs from different batches display different colors.

The number with 515s are better with real white while the 818s display a bluish tint white.
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This is great, I have a wide screen 37 inch monitor ...
by Mirpanda (5 out of 5 stars)
September 7, 2017

This is great, I have a wide screen 37 inch monitor and this makes the feeling much more cinematic. I just wish there were more videos in a 21:9 video format. Setup was a bit of a headache but not enough to prevent me from buying this again when lightpack 2 comes out. Have had some issues with the device randomly disconnecting, but killing and restarting the app is just a minor annoyance to me but might be a deal breaker for some people.
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This thing is awesome!
by Andrew Rosen (5 out of 5 stars)
August 5, 2015

Normally I don't write reviews, but I must because I feel this product is poorly represented within the other reviews. First things first, LIGHTPACK NEEDS A COMPUTER. They state this many times. This was not meant to trick anyone, whoever thought it didn't didn't read correctly.

Setup:

Setup was a breeze. Took about 10 minutes to install on my 42" Vizio TV. The product manual gives instructions with photos on exactly where to put each lightstrip and each lightstrip is held very securely with double sided tape. Everything on the unit is clearly labeled to make this hassle free. On the software end I downloaded Prismatik on my Mac Mini and everything pretty much configured itself. Couldn't have been any easier.

Usage:

So far I think this product is amazing. It works flawlessly and every color is properly represented on the lightpack. It takes high definition TV, Movies, and Games way more enjoyable and immersive. I honestly didn't think it would perform this well and thought the lights would be a subtle addition when they are actually very noticeable.

I would highly recommend this product to anyone who is always ahead in the tech game or wants a better home theater experience.
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One Star
by Jason Vlad (1 out of 5 stars)
April 28, 2017

This did not work on my TV and had to be returned.
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Works great with movies as well on PC
by Notorious Ali (4 out of 5 stars)
May 27, 2016

Once this product sticks to your TV and you upgrade your TV, dont try removing the LEDs. Other than that, I have these lights hooked on to my PC and play PC games while using the software called Ambilight. Works great with movies as well on PC.
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Computer use only. When they say TV they mean MONITOR.
by allen Mac (1 out of 5 stars)
July 28, 2019

Only works with computer. And No DRM content. No YouTube.
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Great product but the software holds it back
by Bradley Scott (3 out of 5 stars)
March 2, 2016

Great product but the software holds it back. You never know if it will work as it did the the day before or if you'll spend 20 minutes trying to figure out why the software isn't working today.

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