Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The console is beautiful, it has a handful of useful upgrades and its actually the cheapest 4k blu ray player on the market. The reason for my review is not so much based on the quality (its quality is top notch) but more so to help people understand the tech involved with the S so that people know what they're getting and how to use these features. Without the proper info you will NOT reap the best benefits that the new S model offers. I'm going to talk about 4K upscaling, HDR and the IR blaster. First is the 4k upscaling. This part is simple, you need a 4k TV and make sure in the settings of the XBOX you have the picture resolution set to 4k UHD. Second is the HDR (High Dynamic Range), this part is pretty tricky, but if you follow the right steps this can actually greatly improve lighting effects and colors in games, movies and apps that support it. You'd be surprised at how good this makes the games look. First thing you need is a 4K TV that has HDR. You'll need to do some research online to see if your TV supports it but most TVs over a year old won't have it. If you go to the "display" settings on the xbox and look for advanced settings, than go to 4K TV details and it will tell everything your TV supports. If it says it doesn't support HDR than don't give up just yet. If you have a smart TV than make sure you have the most current update. You may be lucky and get an update that gives it to you. Even worse is that there are two different kinds of HDR. From what I know, all the new 4K model's from samsung, sony and LG support the one you need, however, Vizio currently does not. I believe Vizio is working on an update that would support it but I'm not 100% on that. Now in order to get the HDR working you need to go to your TV settings and look for dynamic range setting or HDR setting (This should be located in your picture settings of the TV) and make sure that your inputs are set to full (or whatever your tv may call it in the menu) not auto, on my tv when its set to auto the HDR doesn't work with the xbox. Xbox is releasing two games this year that will support this feature, Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3. Check those games out if you want to see the beautiful effects you'll receive from this upgrade. Last but not least is the IR blaster. This is much simpler than HDR. An IR blaster basically makes your xbox have master control over your entertainment center by turning your TV, cable/satellite box and sound system on and off with the Xbox. Its a small but awesome feature. For this all you need to do is go into the TV & one guide menu setting on your Xbox and go to device control. From there its pretty simple, select TV, than TV set up and it'l walk you through the steps to find the right code you need. You usually just need the brand and model number of your tv and the xbox will do the rest. Than do the rest of your components. If your TV isn't shutting off with the xbox than go to those same setting and you can set it to send the off and on signal twice. That worked for me. Thats it folks. I know its a lot but they can be useful features that consoles almost never support. This really is a great console as far as tech goes. Enjoy...