Diva features

Ambient light

The video responsive LED strip

The ambient light strip is a separate kit rather than part of the box, and it follows the TX1 output. That single fact explains most of the cases where it does nothing.

Light behind a display, sometimes called bias lighting, raises the apparent contrast of the picture and reduces the strain of watching a bright rectangle in a dark room. A video responsive strip goes further than a fixed white glow: it samples the picture continuously and drives coloured LEDs so that the wall behind the screen carries the colours at the edges of the image.

Three things decide how well it works. Where the light is derived from, since the strip has to be fed a video signal from somewhere. How picture level is turned into LED level, which is a gamma curve and depends as much on the colour of the wall as on the display. And what happens when there is nothing playing, because a strip that snaps off between sources is more distracting than one that does not.

The ambient light strip on the HDfury Diva

The strip is an option rather than part of the retail box. Its kit holds the strip itself, a 5V 4A power adapter, a USB extension and a Y cable that ties the adapter, the Diva LED control input and the strip together. The LED control jack carries control only, so the strip is powered from its own adapter. Six lengths cover displays from 21 to 85 inch, and the strip follows content up to 4K HDR and LLDV.

The routing rule is the one that catches people out. Ambient light works using TX1 only, so to light a display connected at TX0 the active input going to TX0 must also be routed to TX1, with one input replicated to two outputs. Set that with the OUT1 button on the unit or from the port selector in the web server, and confirm on the OLED that the input you are watching appears on both outputs.

The settings in TOOLS

ACTIVE VIDEO

The effect used when there is active video. The default is FOLLOW ACTIVE VIDEO, and the alternatives include static, blinking, pulsating and rotating colours.

WHILE SYNCING

The effect used when there is no active video, so something different can happen while sources or sinks are switched off.

NEVER TURN OFF

Keeps an effect running permanently, even with no active video and everything else powered down.

VIDEO GAMMA

Alters the gamma used to derive light from picture. The default is 2.2, and a small change here often renders better colours against a coloured wall.

PULSATING SPEED and ROTATING SPEED

The speed of those two effects.

STATIC COLOR SELECTION

The colour used by the static colour effect, as R, G and B values from 0 to 255.

LED ELEMENT GLOBAL COLOR CALIBRATION

Boosts or reduces R, G and B intensity across all the LEDs, on a scale of 0 to 31.

Each of these has a control command as well, so an installer can build them into a macro: set ledprofilevideo 1 selects follow active video, set ledgamma 0 sets gamma 2.2, and set ledredgain, set ledgreengain and set ledbluegain take the calibration values.

All glossary terms