Phillips Hue alternative Smart Lighting? GE Link or other DIY? LED strips?

I'm pretty impressed with all the Max hacks into the Phillips Hue system, but the main thing holding me back is the cost...

Are there any systems that communicate with relatively low lacency over wifi/rf/bluetooth to basic plugs/dimmers thru which you can attach your own bulbs/led strips?

In other words, the cost of the replacement bulbs in the Phillips system has to be driven up because of the extra electronics required internally in each bulb... BUT if there were a system where all the wireless communications lived OUTSIDE of the bulbs (instead in a simple plug to socket converter), then you could substitute your own bulbs and ideally LED strips...

I'm putting a new ceiling in my home studio, and hoping to upgrade the lighting to some kind of smart lighting system, but using Max in clever ways would be a huge plus... Basic dimming functionality is the only must have... I can do without color changing bulbs but that would be a plus along with super low latency and the ability to control directly from ios/android devices, without relaying osc to a host mac/pc...

And upgrading to LED strips would be another plus... I'd probably start out with cheap bulbs, but eventually installing LED strips and inching my way toward some of the more intricate Arduino pixel-mapping stuff would be awesome!

I know that may be asking a lot... maybe I should just go completely DIY arduino from the start, but the cost and convenience factor of piggy backing off a system like Phillips is attractive for a number of reasons!

Cheers,
G