Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The biggest reason I'm writing this review is to thank the folks at Samsung for being a part of a rock solid company. Fanboy? Yep, and here is why... I bought a Sumsung 65HU9000 4K TV almost exactly 2 years ago, and recently purchased the K8500 4K player. Although the player ran BluRays beautifully at 1080p, the 4K discs would not play as the HDMI 4 port in the tv was not recognized as being HDCP 2.2 compliant ( as I understand it, HDCP 2.2 is a encryption protocol designed to prevent piracy - 4K discs simply will not play on a TV that isn't compliant). I called Samsung tech support and after an exhaustive differential diagnostic process, it was determined that either the TV or the player had a hardware problem. This is the cool part - instead of making me pay a couple hundred bucks for a new One Connect box that might or might not solve the problem on a very out of warrantee tv, they gave me an extended warranty for free and had a tech drive to my home and fix the tv (the one connect box was the problem as it turns out - the tech simply gave me a new one and installed it for free). In a nutshell, Samsung chose to spend a few hundred dollars to delight me, when they could easily have taken the typical "car dealership" approach which is to basically screw you out of every penny possible both coming and going. Hmmmmmm... That was almost a rant, sorry about that. On to the performance of the player... I had a friend over last night and we watched Star Wars The Force Awakens on BluRay, and The Martian on 4K UltraHD disk. We also compared the opening scene of The Martian on BluRay and 4K Disc by playing them back to back. Our non-technical consensus was that there was a big jump in picture quality from the BluRay to the 4K for that particular movie. We tried the same thing with the Wave scene in San Andreas, and couldn't tell the difference (we "blinded" ourselves in this little subjective experiment - she swapped the discs without telling me which type was playing, and visa versa). Star Wars was gorgeous on BluRay at 1080p - I can't wait to see it in 2160p when/if they offer a 4K release. I saw it in an IMAX theatre, and I frankly thought the picture was better on my home system. At the end of the day, if you are in a position to indulge your curiosity as to how far home picture quality has come, go for it! If you are a videophile on a tight budget, wait a bit, and this will drop in price especially as other players like LG, Sony, etc jump into the game. Also, realize that not all 4K discs are or will be made equal. I hope you found this review to be useful!