CES 2016

You wouldn’t know it from this small, unimposing display in a small corner of Samsung’s both, or the rather ordinary look of the product (OK by us as this keeps the price down), but the Samsung UBD-K8500 should be the first Ultra HD Blu-ray player when it hits the market, as scheduled, sometime between now and March 30 (Q1 in industry lingo). The projected price is $399.

The player is said to correctly handle both of the most prominent HDR formats: Dolby Vision and HDR10. It will have two HDMI outputs (one for audio only) and a Toslink optical digital out.

The player is available for pre-order on samsung.com

Samsung forecasts there to be at least 30 UHD Blu-ray titles available by the time the player appears (100 are forecast by the end of 2016). An adjoining showcase had a wide range of titles displayed, including Wild, Life of Pi, The Maze Runner, The Martian, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Pan, X-Men Days of Future Past, Exodus: Gods and Kings, San Andreas, Hit Man: Agent 47, The Lego Movie, and Fantastic 4.