Samsung unveils Ultra HD Blu-ray player UBD-K8500

[TheForce]

Do be careful about updating automatically on the Samsung Player. Last week they released 1004 that caused all sorts of problems and took them a few days to release the fix 1005. People who did their auto update got stuck for a few days without use of their player. There is no way to revert back to a prior version as I understand. I have mine set to manual update.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Yep, agree. Learned that the hard way a long time ago. Player and display are set to manual.

 

[teachsac]

Had no problem with 1004. Only seemed to affect certain setups.

 

[tigerfan33]

I sent back my Sammy UHD player and just sold my JVC RS500 which is 4K compatible and without a doubt the best projector I have owned to date. With the mess of HDR and long run HDMI cables, I'll sit out until things settle down. I want plug and play. Not what we have right now. A cluster mess! Not surprised though. Many predicted as much. I got a good price for the JVC and will probably buy much less expensive Sony 1080p in the meantime.

 

[teachsac]

For me it was plug and play. 0 issues. Single HDMI through Yamaha to 940C.

 

[harshness]

As to HDR content, some "experts" claim that no projector or present TV except possibly the OLED has enough light output to properly reproduce the HDR range.

A down-side of OLED is that it doesn't have the brightness of other technologies. You may recall hearing that Samsung wanted the standard to be set so bright that OLED couldn't possibly get there. OLED as the widest range but if it is all relatively dark, it isn't particularly useful.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Mine was plug and play with the Denon, hopefully it is with this thing I am hooking up now

 

[teachsac]

Hmmmm...... I remember someone in January saying to get just that

S~

 

[gadgtfreek]

Yeah, I know. A guy tigerfan turned me on to got me a great deal I couldn't pass up. I was on the hunt for the mkI just because the X4200W put out a lot of heat in the area it was, but he got me close enough for me to call it a deal. Between selling the Oppo 103D and the X4200W, I came out pretty good and got a nice preamp. As you prob remember, I had the 7702mkI but sold it when I started my UHD upgrade. I used that $$$ to buy the X4200 and then go towards a UHD display. Everything is now setup again and connected properly, have all the Marantz inputs setup with video processing off, tested out the Samsung player with it too. Ready to go for Chad, or as ready as it will ever be...

I'll prob run XT32 after he is done tomorrow, I gotta tape the windows now to block out the light tomorrow and then Im hitting the rack!

 

[teachsac]

Running a single cable without any issues?

 

[gadgtfreek]

Yes. X4200W and 7702II seem to do fine. I threw in Martian and let the HDR kick in and watched some. Just one blue jeans cable FE series from Samsung to preamp, and then one FE series to the LG.

 

[gadgtfreek]

FYI, I have seen some report a few frame stutters on UHD discs. The Revenant is the first one I have watched (UHD) and I saw a couple, but it was not a big deal to me.


I'd say looking at the display model and movie variance with the reporting, it is a Sammy bug. Minor, but needs to be fixed nonetheless.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Samsung Remote AK59-00104R

Evidently that remote works and has better buttons. I ordered one off ebay for 7.99 to try.

 

[TheForce]

The Sony VPL VW665ES projector does allow complete color and luminance adjustments within the advanced user settings while HDR is on and the dynamic Iris is also on FULL range. I have two sets of calibrations memorized. One for BT709 and the other for BT2020. The one for BT2020 has HDR turned on 100% of the time. The downside is the 665ES only can reproduce about 85% of the P3 industry standard color range so some colors in the extreme greens, reds and blues are lost and will be seen as compromised from the original. Is that important? Only if the TV is not calibrated properly. Might make reds and greens glow like being radioactive effect.

This becomes a real problem for movies like The Martian that used lots of colored effect lighting. If you want to really see accurate colors, use a movie like the PeeWee Big Holiday that offers brilliant natural color of a D65 spectrum lighting.

The long awaited fix for the above issues with color space and HDR problems with the Samsung K8500 player supposedly has been fixed. Sony released a new firmware update early this morning. I downloaded it but haven't yet done the install to see it it works. One guy from Europe claims it sets the NIT output to 1000 so the HDR functions properly. They got the firmware before we did. I plan to install it later today.

 

[TheForce]

Update- The previously mentioned firmware update was a bust! Those who updated had serious problems with image quality. Glad I waited. Yesterday Sony released a new update after the pulled the other one down. I downloaded it but haven't installed it yet, deciding to wait for other reports.

4K is easy to achieve and there is plenty of content now. But HDR and high color gamut only available on the UHD disks is really a bag of trouble. So much incompatibility and no real standards so different disks suffer different artifacts. Netflix and Amazon 4K content looks quite good so far. But I haven't seen any HDR high color gamut from these providers. Everything looks good with BT709 settings and HDR off.

 

[TheForce]

Just an update:
Sony released a new update to firmware v2.203 for the VPL VW665ES Projector that appears to fix the problems of not displaying some colors in the BT2020 the way the Samsung K8500 player outputs on UHD disks. The image quality is now perfect by what I see.

 

[TheForce]

Finally seeing HDR on a few of the UHD Amazon Prime titles. Well, just one so far but I heard there are a couple others. I saw it working on Mozart in the Jungle.

So far nothing on Netflix HDR but there are quite a few titles that are UHD SDR and they look real good.

All in all the 4K early adopter game is slowly coming together.