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

I’ve only owned this player for a week, and have watched 2 UHD movies on my 75 inch sony 4K TV. It’s my first UHD player, and the picture is what I would expect…clearer than normal Blu-Ray. That’s especially noticeable in small details like lettering and distant people in a scene. But I’d 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 I’ll 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 TV’s can’t take advantage of whatever those special features are.

Finally: As I said, it’s 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 can’t ding it more than one star. If I find other issue I’ll 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.

Replacing older DVD. Works well, easy to operate.
One thing that I didn’t notice in specs and instruction was that DivX codec is not supported, even if DivX is listed in the table of supported file formats.
I have library of movies ripped to AVI format and have to go back and change them to MP4. Which is a good thing – the sound and picture is much better. I knew, eventually will have to update files to newer format, this DVD player was my motivator. LOL
Hopefully I don’t have to change the format for few year as I am sure new one will come around.
Update – after using a week, it is easy to setup, can create shortcuts to main screen. When watching movies from DLNA, player remembers where watching stopped and can resume next time it is turned on – love it option as it was not available on any other DVD player.

Great picture quality

Nice small unit. Works well

Bought this Blu-ray player to go along with my Samsung tv (UN55KS8500) and the picture quality is amazing. Also does a great job upscaling normal blu-rays.

I wanted to address a couple issues brought up in the only other review for this unit. I can see the power light from the front at eye level easily its red when off green when on and second is info for the movie can be seen by hitting the tools button on the remote and selecting information from the top of the list. It shows all the timers also shows every bit of info for audio and video from the disk.

The UI on this player is great and I found it to be very intuitive.

Excellent UHD BD player. Highly recommended. Very reasonably priced. Great performance.

*Update*
After trying to use the player without the remote and trying to fix the remote, I have come to the conclusion the remote is not only problem. Every command issued from the remote is picked up as ok/play. Home, tools, arrow keys, nothing else registers as anything but play/ok. The player itself randomly powers on if I even pick the remote up without pressing any buttons. Initially the player seemed to work without the remote, but that means most of the options aren’t available. As of today, I cannot even play movies without the remote, in essence the player no longer works at all.
*my initial review is posted below*

The player itself seems to work well and the quality is pretty good. The the significant downside to the player itself is that it is slow and unresponsive, trying to change menu options often ends up skipping right over what you wanted to select unless you are super patient.

The larger problem is the remote, not only does it not work well it seems to actually break the player. About an hour into my first movie I started having random/weird problems. When I went to check the menu settings, the remote wasn’t working right and when I turned the player off it immediately turned backed on and had a blinking red/green light. After brief troubleshooting, I realized there is something wrong with the remote, it is constantly sending some sort of command to the player even when no buttons are pushed. When I took the batteries out of the remote, my problems seemed to go away. If they come back, I will update the review to reflect the fact the player doesn’t work.