Customer Ratings & Reviews

I purchased the Samsung 65" 3D / 4K Curve television as an early 2014 Christmas gift. The blu-ray player we got with it did not fully optimize the 3D nor the 4K movies we got to go with it. The 3D movies popped out of the screen, but the 4K movies seemed flat, until now. This Samsung UBD-K8500 makes the movies extremely vibrant and alive. Since it is a Samsung product as well, it truly compliments the home entertainment system we have created. Love it! The curved shape of the player fits with our curved television.

So far the upscaling and sound processing of non-4k Blu-rays is great. Passes all sound unprocessed to my receiver as it should. Dolby Atmos works fine. Can't wait to get some 4k discs. One irritating problem is that as yet VUDU does not work in Smart Hub (worked on previous Blu-ray). YouTube app only outputs PCM stereo sound. Smart Hub apps selection is not as good as my Samsung SUHD TV.

I purchased this player twice!!! The first one wouldn't open to play the disc and the second one kept cutting off while playing.

Numerous problems with unit right out of the box. Worst problem: pauses at random moments during movies, every 3-5 minutes typically. I will be returning it to the store.

Waited several months while watching and reading reviews and figured I would take a chance. No output at all. The blinking red light is all I got so I returned it for a refund.

I contacted support for netflix constantly crashing, even after a reset and firmware upgrade, but they contact me back with instructions on how to reset on a Samsung TV.

Fresh out of the box, it didn't work. Very simply, no power, nothing. I was looking forward to watching 4k video, but this ended up being lost money.

Like another reviewer I bought both the Blu-ray copy and 4k hdr copy of hitman to gauge the difference. At the distance I sat from my 55" 4k oled, I could indeed see a resolution difference between real and upscale 4k (8 feet). The big difference though was the HDR, the dark scenes that are abound in the movie popped that much more, and the vibrant scenes became more noticeable due to enhanced contrast. Unlike other reviewers I don't think the remote is too small (at least not for my XL men's gloves sized hands). Picture included shows size of magic remote, 4k player, and my zvox 770. Great device and no issue through 3 screenings.

I got this last week. After some settings adjustments with the BD Wise etc the picture is beautiful. You can definitely see the difference. And 4k content streams through nicely. Well worth it. The remote is intuitive and easy to master.

Player won't read DVD's. Taking it in for possible repair and will adjust my review after it is fixed.

I have a 70" Vizio 4K TV without HDR, the picture quality is awesome!! **Simple config- 1st- make sure you have high quality HDMI cables from your 4K HDTV to your 4K enabled receiver. 2nd- connect your second high quality HDMI cable to your K8500 Blu-ray player. Turn on all, the sync takes takes seconds- Enjoy!! The picture quality is excellent. The remote is small, but you get adjusted quickly after seeing the picture quality. I do not see the difference between TVs with HDR and TVs without HDR. Beware of marketing !!

Apparently this is a know problem, however there was no recall and I'm past my 1 year warranty. read the blogs on this issue.

This 4-K player worked great for twelve months then a few weeks after the warranty ran out, the unit stopped working.

Samsung is usually the best but not here. Flimsily didn't work out of the box. Just too soon for 4k blu ray. Whomp whomp

Ahhh. 4K. UHD. BLU RAY. A new age is upon us folks. 4K UHD BLU RAY has officially arrived! It has been a good week. On Wednesday February 10, 2016 I received the first and only 4K UHD BLU RAY PLAYER currently available to the public. Then on Sunday February 14, 2016 I will have my first 4k UHD BLU RAY movie from Best Buy. Before getting into the review let me give you a rundown of my equipment used for the review. I will also be omitting any review of the streaming services on this player since we all have these services in one way or another on our tv’s, rokus, and etc. This review is strictly for the player and functionality itself. My equipment: Sony XBR55X850C 55” 4K UHD TV(10 Bit, HDR, Rec. 2020 compatible) Pioneer Elite SC-95 9.2 Channel, 11 Channel Pre-out 4K Upscaling Receiver (4K, 10 Bit, HDR, Rec. 2020, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X capable) Emotiva XPA-3 200 WPC Amplifier Emotiva UPA 700 80 WPC Amplifier Oppo BDP 103 BLU RAY/4K Upscaling Player HSU VTF-2 MK4 Subwoofer Polk Rti8 (Front left and Right) Polk Csi A6 Center Channel Polk Monitor 60 Surrounds Polk Monitor 40 Surround Back 4 Polk mounted on ceiling speakers From power off, to powering on boot time is very fast. Upon starting up the Blu Ray player, it automatically notifies you that there is an update. But it does not tell you what the update is for. The update says it can take up to 5 minutes and it took about 3 or 4 minutes. This will probably depend on your ISP, whether you are using wifi, or Ethernet. I was using Ethernet with 120 Mbps down speed. Once it updated itself it was off to the races! Since, at the time of arrival of the player there were no 4K discs available, I wanted to see how the player handled 4K upscaling with Blu Ray discs. And I was able to use the Oppo as a reference standard since the Oppo does an excellent job at 4k upscaling. The first Blu Ray I tried was more recent material in the movie Everest. This is a beautiful movie with very white whites and excellent color saturation. There’s not too many dark scenes in this movie so I wasn’t really looking for contrast. Anyways….I was able to do side by side comparisons by using the Samsung via disc, and using my Pioneer receiver to switch the input over to my Oppo where I could refer back to the same movie utilizing the player’s dlna feature via my Plex dlna server where all of my rips are full 1080p with all the HD AUDIO streams including Dolby Atmos. This was a huge benefit since I was able to use the exact same equipment, source and media for comparisons so none of my findings would be skewed in any way. And I was quite surprised by my findings. I could not find any noticeable differences in the picture quality or sound quality. Not even the slightest difference. And believe me I tried. The Samsung matched the Oppo in every aspect of picture quality. Each scene I viewed on the Samsung, I would then switch over to the Oppo and critique the same scene. I even paused numerous scenes, switching back and forth and in addition took pictures with my iphone to see if I could see any differences, in contrast, color saturation, brightness, sharpness, noise and any other differences I could see whether big or small and I literally could not see any difference in picture quality. The Samsung matched my Oppo pound for pound in 4k upscaling. The sound department left me with the same findings. Everest, while not the best Dolby Atmos mix is still a pretty solid one; is spacious and hits hard in the bass department. The next movie I demoed was Spectre. As far as Spectre, while I was disappointed that this movie was not released with a Dolby Atmos mix, any disappoint that I had immediately went away as soon as the movie started. While not being a Dolby Atmos mix, Spectre has one of THE best soundtracks I have ever heard. Not only it is ridiculously accurate with clarity at deafening levels, this DTS-HD track is one the most full, dynamic, broad and spacious ear pleasures I have ever heard that is not a Dolby Atmos track. Using Dolby Surround enhances the dynmaics and spaciousness even more. Right after the classic Bond trumpet intro sounds, there is a deep bass drum thump that hits with a force that I’m not sure I have ever experienced before. Its not the loudest or deepest bass I’ve ever heard. Its just a different sound. You have to hear it to understand what I’m talking about. I remember hearing it in theatres thinking “what is that” and then smiling knowing how much I was looking forward to see how my HSU VTF-2 MK4 sub would fare when replicating the same sound in my home theatre and the blu ray (and my subwoofer)doesn’t disappoint. And neither does the Samsung. It sounds exactly the same compared to when playing on my $500 Oppo. Every screech, every thump, every high pitched scream, yell, car crash and fist fight sounds as good on the Samsung as it does on my Oppo. As far as speed, the player is very snappy and I haven’t noticed any lag between the remote and sending commands to the receiver. Opening up apps and streaming services is very quick as well. Much faster than the Oppo.. The remote is very small. Fits in the palm of your hand, which I do like but I wish the remote had a backlight. The lack of backlit keys kinda cancels out the convenience of the remote’s petit size since most people watch movies in the dark and its hard to know where the buttons are and what you are pressing. I’m sure over time yo will get used to the buttons and be able to navigate the remote’s buttons from memory, but the remote is so small that I found myself frantically look for my phone so that I can shine the phone’s light on the remote to see where the buttons were. If my phone wasn’t beside me then I had to engage Alexa(Amazon Echo) to turn on my philips hue lights. After a few times of this it became very annoying. I use a harmony remote for all of my equipment but at the time there are no remotes codes for me to add the device to my harmony software. My only gripe so far with this UHD BLU RAY player is the dlna functionality. Samsung touts their hardware as being able to play pretty much any file you can think of or throw at it. So I was very excited to know that I would be able to stream all my full HD & HD Audio mkv rips over dlna through my plex server. This however was not the case….at all. I was frustratingly disappointed after I tried mkv file after mkv file after mkv file and being greeted with a “This file type is not yet supported”….What??? However, there may be an upside to this. I have had numerous experiences with inferior electronics that could not play certain mkv files. Heck even my Xbox One that Microsoft claims they want to be your multimedia hub can’t even play my mkv rips. Most devices that can not play a certain file type will usually greet you with a “this file type is not supported”. Samsung however tells me “this file type is not YET supported”. What exactly does this mean? Does the “yet” imply that its only a matter of time before Samsung updates the player to accommodate playback of these file types? One can only hope this is the case if you are like me and dlna streaming of your files on your local network is of utmost importance to you. I’m an optimist so I’m going to stick with that and keep my fingers crossed. I have already emailed Samsung support about the matter….Still awaiting a response….. As far as I’m concerned, minus the lack of dlna functionality, the Samsung UHD player has lived up to the hype. Is it a high end blu ray player? Not at all by any means. Does it perform like one? Based on your individual meaning of what is “high end”, for me I have to say it does as far as audio and video quality. Again, things can only improve with future updates and hopefully an update to support all the formats that Samsung claims its supports over dlna. For me, the lack of dlna compatibility is a big asterisks. I rip all my content and then stream it through my plex server using my Oppo and the files play flawlessly. No lag, no stuttering, no hiccups, no problem…PERIOD. I try to stay away from having to load and unload a disc every time I wanna watch a movie. The only time I need to use a disc is for 3d Blu Ray. I did find 3-4 mkv files that did play, BUT the HD Audio was stripped down to lossy DTS instead of DTS HD Master. Again, this may just be due to Samsung wanting to get ahead of the industry to be the first player to market and releasing their product before all of its functionalities are in place and just push a firmware update to the player after the fact. Here’s hoping that’s the case. So this may not be an issue for some of you. If Samsung fixes this issue I will more than likely keep this player. The only way I would opt to buy another player is if Panasonic or Oppo offers something drastically superior with their releases which may not be worth it when you consider price to value ratio. *Still waiting on 4K Blu Rays to add to review.

Just don't buy it, you'll be happier. From locking up, to failure to eject for 3 days.

Don't buy, the technology is NOT there Yet...Theres a visible glitch every 2 to 3 minutes...Not Cool.....

not happy with the picture quality or the features of the unit, returned it!

Audio chip broke after a week & the player is discontinued now. Don't buy.

The Samsung K 8500 Won't play in Dolby Atmos. Will play 4 K movies .