A.R.E offers cheap alternative to Philips Ambilight for everyone

Ambilight for everyone

4 September 2006 14:14 GMT / By Amber Maitland

A small company in the Netherlands is taking on Philips Ambilight technology with its own version of adaptive ambient light for monitors and screens.

A.R.E, which stands for Ambient Reality Effects, offers software that controls up to four LED lighting strips for monitors and screens hooked up to a media center PC.

The screen analysis application runs under Windows, and produces ambient light for movies, games, surfing the Internet, etc.

The software offers automatic and manual selection of colour, as well as preset colour waves, and can even be set to give visual alerts for incoming emails or new chat windows.

If you’re just typing text documents, the software can also interpret the text into colours around the screen.

The company also offers a free SDK for developers who want to work the effects in to videogames.

The starter package costs €165, while the software can be purchased for €49.95 for those who already have lighting industry DMX standard set up.

See A.R.E.nl for further information.