Movie night has always been a staple in my family, especially with all the streaming services we subscribe to. We put out the popcorn, everyone picks their favorite seat in the room, and then we start the movie.
While this setup is already simple, I found a way to make our movie nights feel even more inviting by synchronizing the room’s lighting with what we’re watching. Instead of just dimming the lights, the atmosphere matches the mood of the film.
Constructing the theater experience
Every accessory and scene can enhance your movie watching experience
There are two ways to connect your lights your TV: through the outlet or directly to the lamp. More specifically, you can use both smart plug or smart bulbs.
Each option has its own use cases, but they ultimately achieve the same goal. Smart chips let you use the existing bulb and bulb as usual, but instead of controlling the power of the bulb directly, you control it through a smart plug.
Smart lampson the other hand, replace the existing bulb while keeping the bulb plugged into a standard socket. Instead of controlling the power of the entire bulb, you control the bulb itself. They can also change colors, provided you buy a color-changing model.
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- Colors
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Multicolored
- Connection
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Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
- Brand
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Govee
For inexpensive yet reliable color-changing bulbs, it’s hard to beat Govee. The lamps are bright and colorful, and the Govee app has lots of fun patterns for every mood and season.
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- Connection
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2.4GHz Wi-Fi
- Integrations
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Alexa, Google Home
- Dimensions
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2.62 x 1.57 x 1.5 inches
The Kasa Smart Plug Mini is a connected wall socket that allows you to control connected devices with voice commands or a smartphone.
While both options share the same foundation—the ability to control your lights from your devices—they can offer different experiences when watching TV.
I used both setups and chose one over the other depending on the room. For example, I use a smart plug in my bedroom to turn my lamps on and off. And in the media room downstairs, I use smart bulbs to change the color and atmosphere of the room while watching TV.
To get an idea of the setup in my media room, I have it Apple TV connected to my smart TV. While the television itself Compatible with HomeKitI prefer to use Apple TV because it is more reliable.
Additionally, since I use Apple products, setting up my home theater experience requires both the Home app and the Siri Shortcuts app.
Scenes allow me to handle everything at once
Turn on an entire room full of devices
I use the Home app for main scenes. This includes turning on the Apple TV, then turning off the lights to darken the room. And in areas with smart lights, I can dim the lights or change the color.
When I watch shows, simply turning the lights off is my preferred method watching YouTube videos on the big screen. However, adding color creates a more immersive viewing experience.
Scenes are useful because they allow you to create a predefined configuration and have everything happen automatically according to your saved settings. For me, that means “Movie Time,” turning on the TV, dimming the lights, and getting everything ready to start watching.
If I don’t want the room to be completely dark, I can have the TV as the only light source smart bulbs dim down to a certain brightness level instead of.
I can also set my smart bulbs to change to a specific color, although each bulb can only be assigned one color per scene. While it’s easy enough to manually change the colors later, I decided to create different scenes for different genres, such as dark purple for horror movies or soft pink for romantic movies.
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Those different scenes are then combined with special phrases like “Horror Movie Night” and “Romance Movie Night”. Names may be simple, but they’re easy to remember and get the job done.
I work more with Siri shortcuts
Simplify your movie watching process
Although the Apple Home scenes do a great job of setting up my viewing experience, I prefer not to have a few scenes cluttering up the app. So I turned to Siri Shortcuts instead.
Siri Shortcuts can do the same things as scenes while offering more flexibility. Instead of creating separate scenes for each movie genre, I can combine everything into one shortcut and have the shortcut show or tell me the menus while it’s running.
For example, I started by turning on my TV and then asked, “What genre are you watching?” I created a shortcut that asks an additional question like Depending on what I choose from the list or what I say, the shortcut can change the color of my smart bulbs.
In addition, Siri Shortcuts can offer more control over Apple TV than just scenes. Unlike a scene, a shortcut can open specific apps on Apple TV and then provide additional options.
That is, if I know, I will watch the movie Paramount+ or Disney+I can select one of those options first and then be presented with genre options. Or if I want to look more broadly at everything available, I can have a shortcut Open the Apple TV app for a universal search experience.
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- Subscription with ads
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no
- Synchronous streams
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6
- Price
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$12.99/mo
It’s the only place where you can stream shows like Apple TV Do not quit and Ted Lasso and movies like The Lost Bus and CODA.
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- Subscription with ads
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Yes, the Disney Basic plan
- Synchronous streams
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up to 4
- Live TV
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no
- Price
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Starting at $10 per month
Family favourites, old classics and exciting new TV all in one place.
Creating a shortcut can be time-consuming because you may need to repeat the same color options under each streaming app if you decide to organize it this way. However, the extra setup is worth it in the end, as everything is centralized into a single, customizable shortcut.
Do more with Home Assistant and Plex or Jellyfin
For the open source smart home leech
Even though I use Apple TV and HomeKit, that doesn’t mean it’s the only ecosystem that can achieve this. No matter what smart home platform you use, there’s usually a way to connect multiple devices through an automation or smart action similar to a Siri Shortcut or scene.
Buy it House helper as an example. This open source smart home platform has a bit more of a learning curve, but it opens up more powerful automation and workflows. For example, if you watch movies using Jellyfin or Plex, you can add these services to Home Assistant and use media playback as a trigger.
For example, you can create a Jellyfin automation that dims the lights and sets the color of your choice (and Do the same for Plex). You can even use it actionable notifications to send you requests choosing a color or scene when you start looking at something.
Enhance your home theater experience
Adding smart lights to your home theater setup and connecting them to your streaming device or TV is simple and can make a big difference. With just a few tweaks, it can elevate your browsing experience.
You don’t need fancy lighting systems or the most sophisticated equipment to enhance your movie nights. Simply adding smart lights can make a noticeable difference. It only took me a few minutes to set up, and once you get it into your routine, you might wonder how you ever watched movies without it.
