Hands-on with the world's first 4K Blu-ray player

The first Blu-ray player, Samsung's BD-P1000, launched in 2006 for the price of $1,000 USD.

Nearly 10 years later, the first 4K Blu-ray player is finally available, and it's a Samsung too. At just $400, the UBD-K8500 costs much less than its predecessor -- but its format faces a much less certain future. In 2006 the big enemy of Blu-ray was another disc format, called HD-DVD. Today it's an entire Internet-worth of streaming video from the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube (to name just a few).

4K Blu-ray's main appeal is potentially superior video quality -- the 3,840x2,160-pixel resolution is four times that of "regular" 1080p HDTV -- but what has us most excited about the format is its support forHDR (high dynamic range), which is capable of delivering far better contrast ratios than we've seen to date. And while this disc player also can stream 4K online video services (as can products like the Roku 4 and Fire TV), the big jump in image quality over good old HDTV probably won't come via streaming anytime soon -- at least, not based on the 4K content we've streamed so far. We're betting the more noticeable improvement will come from 4K Blu-ray discs.

Before we go any further: no, we haven't been able to spin up any actual 4K Blu-ray discs yet on the UBD-K8500, because they won't actually be available until March. We did test standard Blu-ray discs and play a few video files, including some great-looking HDR. Check back in a couple weeks, when the first discs hit the market, and we'll expend this article into a full CNET review.

Look and feel

Still with us? Good.

The UBD-K8500 is nice-looking for a disc player, with a brushed finish and a curved design that will mesh well with any AV system -- and particularly well, of course, with the curved TVs Samsung insists on continuing to make.

Controls on the player itself are minimal, and surprisingly for a high-end unit there's no display. In one strike against, the front-panel USB port is covered by a cheap-feeling rubber plug.

The small remote gets the job done, and the buttons are generally well-chosen, but we were disappointed in the lack of dedicated fast-forward and rewind buttons. To do that you have to long-press on the skip forward/back keys.

The back panel is sparse but we appreciate the dual HDMI outputs. If your receiver doesn't support 4K signals, hook it up to the second HDMI port to get audio while the first sends video to your 4K TV. As expected, the main video output supports HDMI 2.0a for HDR, and requires an HDCP 2.2 connection to deliver copy-protected content (which is just about everything you'd want to watch).

That front USB port can play files from USB sticks and hard drives, such as that 4K copy of "TimeScapes" you bought in 2012. The only other connections are optical digital audio and a wired Ethernet port. Like most modern video players, the Samsung lacks analog video outputs.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Features of the new Blu-ray format include 4K resolution, which is four times that of 1080p, better contrast through High Dynamic Range (or HDR) and better colors than standard Blu-ray discs. We're much more excited by the latter two than by the mere bump in resolution, and happily most of the first discs announced do offer HDR and wide color. 4K Blu-ray also supports next-generation audio formats, namely Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

Of course all of these features are optional and will vary per disc. Some discs may support Dolby Vision's HDR format, for example, although none of the initial titles do.

The complement of streaming services is comprehensive for a Blu-ray player, but falls short of what you get from most 4K TVs (including Samsung's own) or a Roku 4.

You can use the K8500 to get 4K streams from Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video and M-Go. On the other hand its Vudu app lacks 4K support (currently exclusive to the Roku 4), there's no UltraFlix app (Samsung's 4K TVs have one), and the M-Go app didn't recognize the hard drive full of downloaded 4K/HDR movies we attached (that's too bad, because that function would allow owners of non-Samsung TVs to enjoy M-Go's 4K/HDR movies).

And although the player supports HDR content from 4K Blu-ray discs, its Amazon Video app doesn't have HDR support (yet). Here's where we mention that the apps built into your 4K TV are likely redundant with those built into the UBD-K8500, and that if you have an HDR-compatible TV, it likely has an Amazon app that does handle HDR.

Of course, nobody is buying this player for streaming support. What you care about is 4K Blu-ray disc p

What we have (and haven't) tested so far

Again, unfortunately no 4K Blu-ray discs are available yet, so we weren't able to test them. New 4K Blu-ray discs will cost around $30 and include titles such as "The Martian" and "Sicario." Here's the full rundown.

In the meantime we checked out some standard discs, as well as the player's file playback and streaming performance.

Most Blu-ray players take about 15 seconds to start up Netflix , but the K8500 took about half that, which puts it in line with dedicated streaming players like the Roku. We used the player to stream "Narcos" in 4K to an an LG 4K OLED TV, and compared it side by side against the 1080p version on an LG 1080p OLED. Despite some minor differences, due to the panels themselves, the streams looked largely identical. In other words, as we've seen in previous tests, 4K streaming doesn't provide a major boost in image quality compared with 1080p streaming.

More impressive was the player's rendering of some 4K HDR files (provided by TV manufacturers) played via an attached USB hard drive. On a clip from "A Million Ways to Die in the West," the images popped in a way that a standard-dynamic-range Blu-ray simply can't. For example, in the jail scene in which Charlize Theron talks to an incarcerated man, you could see details in highlights and an overall impact that would escape standard-dynamic-range material. As the man stands in the cell you could see deep black in his cowboy hat and also make out images outside the windows.

While disc playback was mostly excellent, there were still some traces of video errors in our synthetic Blu-ray and DVD tests -- a little moire left over in our 2:2 pulldown test or incomplete jaggies compensation --but nothing worth worrying about, and certainly not enough to be noticeable in most program material.