LED Lighting System

Ever wanted to make the wall or area behind your TV glow? Way cool. But, it turns out that doing it is harder than it probably should be. There are essentially two manufacturers of LED lighting systems that you can use. One you can only buy from Ikea. The other at a few online website stores.

IKEA
The IKEA store has an LED light strip that they call the "Dioder". They come as a 4-pack of 9 3/4" strips with an integrated controller for changing the colors, turning off, etc. The price is around $50 a pack. You get set colors to choose from. .

CYRON
This company makes a better product. The Media Highlighter LED Lighting System HT1502 comes with (4) strips 15" in length. You get 110,000 colors to choose from. You also get some fancy features such as fading, pulsing, movement to music. The price tag is $79+ depending on where you buy. I found them at http://www.frys.com/ (search for ht1502) $29.90. The http://www.cyron.com/ website is a bit hard to navigate...the easiest thing to do if you go there is to "shop".

Buy, Try, Return
I tried the Ikea. It worked. But it was going to take too many to properly backlight a 55" TV. It also only had 5 colors. But, it was super easy to use.

Buy, Try, Install
I tried the Cyron set and stuck with it. It was easy to install. I bought 3 sets and was able to get good coverage for the TV. The controller could use some changes to it to make it easier to use though, that is my only complaint. I found that you could purchase "extenders" kits for the light bars without buying the whole system...but Fry's was closing them out at $29.90 and it was cheaper to go that route.

Other Resources
You can also check http://www.lightinguniverse.com/ for the Cyron lighting kits. Just do a search on HT1502.

I have also found a place called http://www.ledlightingkit.com/ that claims to have something similar. Didn't use them...but what they have seems nice.