![]() Full 1920 x 1080p video at 30ish Mbps - compared to 5-15 for HD streaming - coupled with LCPM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD MA. Settings Menu access takes too many clicksīlu-ray Discs represented the pinnacle of home entertainment formats for many years, despite never saturating the market ala DVD.Wish Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA bitsteaming options were separate.Some apps not yet working to full potential.Lou Reed's Berlin, a stripped back concert disc, was menu-ready in just 25 seconds. Goldfinger, a Java-heavy Blu-ray, goes from tray to menu in just 36 seconds. While the player may not win merit points for construction, it's whiplash fast. Home cinema users should ensure that the Digital Output of the player is set to 'Bitstream (unprocessed)', and make sure Dynamic Range Control is set to Off. It's worth taking some time to explore the Sound menu. Of course, bitstreamed Dolby and DTS soundtracks are delivered to an AV receiver just as efficiently as from any other player, so that's not an issue with Blu-ray movies. Now, in a TV/soundbar environment this will go unnoticed, but with demanding electronics it becomes rather obvious. Dirty Boys (The Next Day, David Bowie) proves too brittle to really engage. On the audio front, the K8500 is rather ordinary, exhibiting a metallic, hashy tone with two channel PCM. But changing these settings means that you'll need to remember to switch viewing modes depending on your disc format. ![]() ![]() This allows you to dial back brightness and contrast for 1080p Blu-rays (I found about -5 and 0, respectively does it, but this may vary depending on your display). One way to address this is to exploit the player's User setting. The Man from U.N.C.L.E (Blu-ray) opens in after dark East Berlin, but all the artful shadows of the cinematography were absent. Without HDR10 metadata to guide the set, your telly is likely to scale the image as bright as it can (for this audition, I used a Samsung JS9000). The catch is that, if you then watch a standard Blu-ray using the same setting via the same HDMI input on your TV, the image is significantly degraded. For sheer 4K HDR pizzazz, however, I think Standard has it. Though, that said, the Movie mode does offer the best contrast/brightness combination.Ĭhoosing between these settings largely comes down to preference and content. It might not have been your first choice, but the Standard setting actually pulls out more subtleties. If you want to extract every last detail from your 4K discs, it's probably not the best place to go. However, test patterns reveal that the player is muting out a lot of high frequency information in this playback mode. You might naturally assume that the Movie mode is the best choice. These comprise Dynamic, Standard, Movie and User. The K8500 has a variety of picture modes available via the Tools menu. So your best guide is the modes the player itself offers, coupled to the HDR input mode of the screen itself, which is usually locked to ensure the integrity of the HDR signal. It's not possible to use conventional test patterns to balance an image for HDR viewing – they're simply inappropriate. ![]() Simply choosing the best mode to watch UHD HDR content is a puzzle – and that's without any additional complications offered by your 4K display of choice.ĤK HDR rewrites the rulebook of AV set-up. Obviously, the key reason to invest in a 4K Blu-ray player is picture quality, and the K8500's images look reassuringly fabulous when it comes to fine detail and colour, native 4K discs edge ahead of UHD offered by Netflix and Amazon.ĤK Blu-ray is more challenging proposition than it might at first appear. Curiously, the ubiquitous BBC iPlayer is missing though. Need more? Hop over to Samsung's app store. The Smart Hub user interface is easy enough to navigate, and the player supports Netflix and Amazon Instant Video 4K streams, and has YouTube, a web browser, Spotify, Deezer, BFI Player and Daily Motion on tap. What you'll find on the K8500 is Samsung's older Smart Hub, with a lick of paint. Interestingly, the Blu-ray player doesn't use Samsung's Tizen smart TV platform. The UBD-K8500 is, of course, more than just a disc spinner: it's also a media player with connected streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu. The player ships with a stubby little remote control, which rather infuriatingly is powered by a coin battery rather than regular, ubiquitous AAAs. The K8500 also has Wi-Fi onboard, in case your entertainment centre is a bit too far from your router. There's also Ethernet LAN and an optical digital audio output, however, analogue audio outputs are AWOL. If your kit is up to snuff, you'll only need the main HDMI output.
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