4K/UHD bluray players that decode DTS to Dolby?

I started watching Planet Earth 2 UHD on Sunday with my Samsung player and it looks and sounds amazing. No Atmos but a DTS HD MA 5.1 soundtrack that the Samsung handles very nicely down converted through the playbar. My advice is you can read about the new players/new features and sit on the fence all day, or you can pick up the Samsung (cheap enough at the moment) and experience 4k/HDR and 5.1 through the playbar right now (I think Samsung have also just issued a new firmware update for Netflix HDR, with Amazon HDR already available).

I'd be surprised if most people could tell the difference between the Samsung and other players, if they weren't told what they were looking at, and with the new Samsung M9500 about to be released the price of the 8500 will surely fall further.

I started watching Planet Earth 2 UHD on Sunday with my Samsung player and it looks and sounds amazing. No Atmos but a DTS HD MA 5.1 soundtrack that the Samsung handles very nicely down converted through the playbar. My advice is you can read about the new players/new features and sit on the fence all day, or you can pick up the Samsung (cheap enough at the moment) and experience 4k/HDR and 5.1 through the playbar right now (I think Samsung have also just issued a new firmware update for Netflix HDR, with Amazon HDR already available).

I'd be surprised if most people could tell the difference between the Samsung and other players, if they weren't told what they were looking at, and with the new Samsung M9500 about to be released the price of the 8500 will surely fall further.

Agreed, you probably won't know if you're missing out on some fine detail in the feathers or some small sound from the surrounds unless you were in a screen to screen comparison.

Truth be told... I think people put way to much into how professional reviews differentiate the hardware they can buy.

That being said, the Samsung is a great stop-gap measure for those waiting on a DV compatible disc player that works with their sonos setup. I'm looking forward to getting it myself.

Apologies Carson - missed your earlier post.

I started watching Planet Earth 2 UHD on Sunday with my Samsung player and it looks and sounds amazing. No Atmos but a DTS HD MA 5.1 soundtrack that the Samsung handles very nicely down converted through the playbar. My advice is you can read about the new players/new features and sit on the fence all day, or you can pick up the Samsung (cheap enough at the moment) and experience 4k/HDR and 5.1 through the playbar right now (I think Samsung have also just issued a new firmware update for Netflix HDR, with Amazon HDR already available).

I'd be surprised if most people could tell the difference between the Samsung and other players, if they weren't told what they were looking at, and with the new Samsung M9500 about to be released the price of the 8500 will surely fall further.

I agree. I got the Samsung last week and I'm glad I finally decided to "pull the trigger". My 4K copy of Planet Earth II arrives today - can't wait.

Epic news!! I was following this thread for a while and i still went with the oppo in hopes of dolby vision and dd upgrades and sure enoufh on the day of my unboxing (today) i found that oppo has a betta firmare that ads a dts or dolby digital conversion over optical!!! It does not update automatically. You have to go to their website and download it to usb and then hard update. Only issue for me now is my ps4 and wii u now cant utilize since the optical goes from oppo to sonos bar. But im thinking of playing with the hdmi pass though option the oppo had with my ps4 pro. Which in turn should allow my games to play in 5.1 through the oppo when gaming, which was an issue since ps4 pro doesn not do dd 5.1 over hdmi......(yet ps3 does. Lame)

My first time here but i wanted to save people from giving up the sonos!!! Ive been playing moana currently which is a dts 7.1 format and under about my sonos it comes up dd 5.1

thanks for feeding that info back 🆒

Many thanks for that Kyle, sounds like there's light at the end of the tunnel at last!! Would be interesting if you could keep us all posted as to any other testing once you've used the player for a while. What TV are you using and what's your opinion of the picture quality of the Oppo? Lastly - Are you in the US or UK?

Wow, this is fantastic Kyle.
Yes, please keep us up to date how your Oppo performs. I think I'll head over to the AVS forums and check in with the Oppo-203 thread and see what they say.