Samsung UBD-M8500/ZA 4K UHD Blu-Ray Player

Ive only owned this player for a week, and have watched 2 UHD movies on my 75 inch sony 4K TV. Its my first UHD player, and the picture is what I would expect...clearer than normal Blu-Ray. Thats especially noticeable in small details like lettering and distant people in a scene. But Id expect that from any UHD play. So I can only pick nits with the operation of the player. Being the 2017 version I expected minor annoyances to be ironed out, but: First, there is no indicator on the front to know if the unit is powered on or off. The only Power light is on top, which you can only see standing above the player. Not smart. Maybe Ill mount a mirror up there! Next, I looked in vain for an on screen display of play time on a DVD, like minutes into the movie and minutes remaining. None to be found. My previous players all had that feature. Also, there are apparently some feature that can only be used with a Samsung TV. There is a "123" button on the remote, for example, that seems to have no function in my setup. Too bad other TVs cant take advantage of whatever those special features are. Finally: As I said, its my first UHD player. HDMI2 cable is not just recommended...its mandatory for a UHD TV. Hooking it up with my old HDMI cable resulted in a "no input detected" message on my TV. GIven that, including an HDMI2 cable would have been nice for those wanting to unpack it and immediatley hook it up. Still, it worked out of the box, was easy to set up and delivers UHD resolution so I cant ding it more than one star. If I find other issue Ill revisit this review. Update 1: To see the time into or remaining on a DVD, hit the Pause/Resume button. That calls up a banner that takes up about 1/4 of the top of the screen, but eventually times out.

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Pros: - Easy set up - Picture is unbelievable! - Features integrate with my Samsung S8 Cons: - No digital display on player. There is no way to see where I am in the movie time-wise. One can only discern this using an on-screen pop-up. Of course, the same goes with CD playback but worse because I dont always have the TV on when I play a CD. Since I have this unit in a theater room, I really dont want to turn on the projector just to have CD track information. - The remote may just be a tad too small. It gets lost in seat cushions easily. - The remote has no back-lighting. In my dark theater room, I need to have a small flashlight handy just to see the buttons. I have memorized the positions of the commonly used buttons, but I still need to break out the flashlight to FF/RW or |> & <|

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Works well playing 4K discs and also up-converting blu ray movies. Good features for the money. Can control the player with my Sony TV remote. Kinda miss a front display, but you can easily bring up disc info pressing pause on the remote. Remote is VERY basic. When setting the TV control buttons on the remote to control a non Samsung TV, I found the instructions in the manual very confusing. The manual shows the numbers 1-0 in the illustration, but what you cant see is the button text under the number. Additionally the example does not specify the button name for the numbers. I was bringing up the numbers using the 123 button and that just did not work. To help anyone else that is having a problem, this is the correct way to do it. Using Remote Control Buttons to Enter TV Codes: 1. Press and hold the (TV Power) button. 2. While holding the (TV Power) button, press the buttons on the remote that correspond to a two-digit TV Code from TV list. Use the key below as a guide for the numbers. 123 button = 1 DISC MENU button = 2 POP UP button = 3 UP = 4 LEFT = 5 RIGHT = 6 DOWN = 7 RETURN = 8 HOME = 9 TOOLS = 0 For example: To enter code 01, while holding down the TV power button, press the TOOLS button for 0 and then press the 123 button for 1. I did call Samsung support, and they were very helpful. When I bought this 4K players were going for over $300. I paid $140 and it is well worth the money.

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When playing 4K UHD movies this player is excellent, it is very easy to set up, simplicity itself. However, when playing other than 4K UHD there can be problems. Older standard DVDs Often do not play at all or freeze, The same can be true for Blu-ray not on 4K disc’s. The unit does a extremely good job in up converting Those older Blu-ray discs that do not freeze. When I take one of the drisks That freeze in this machine and place them into my old player there is no problem this tells me the problem is in Samsung not the drisk. Aside from freezing on older disks this unit is probably state of the art. Today there are really very few U HD movies available but I would anticipate that in a year or two virtually everything will be released in this format. Having read the reviews of its competitors my guess is that as of now this is as good as it gets.

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This was getting some pretty bad reviews but so far for the price this has worked great for me. I will say the case design and remote have little to desire but its got a great picture and is functional for me. If your a power user your probably not going to find the user interface or the remote to be of the best design. With me I go more for picture quality and this does a good job with regular DVDs and Blu-rays. Update 11/19/18 Well the price was right and this has a great picture but it stopped playing blu rays after the first 4K dvd I played. Ive only used it about 15 times and just purchased a 4K tv. I put a 4k disc in and looked great but now it wont play an blu ray any more guess the blu ray laser is toast or theres a software issue. I did a default reset and it played the blu ray one time and then the same will only play 4K movies now . Luckily I took the bad reviews to heart and bought the extended service plan. It was a great player while it worked.

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I am giving this 4 stars because there does not seem to be any way to turn off HDMI audio when using the optical connection to a surround system. My previous blu-ray player, a ps3 let me do this. I realize this is a nit because I can just turn down the TV audio to nothing but it just seems to be a silly miss on the part of Samsung. If I am wrong please let me know and I will update my review. Otherwise, I like it. It is connected to an 82 in Samsung m8000 TV and a Bose lifestyle 48 surround system.

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