A friend recently gave me a Samsung 4K Bluray player. It was an extra unit he had lying around so “here, enjoy…Merry Christmas.” I’ve so far watched 4K discs of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Revenant, but I’m not going to start buying 4K Blurays until they start issuing 4K remasters of large-format classic films (70mm, Ultra Panavision 70, VistaVision), which they’ll probably never do. However, I noticed today that the Samsung 4K player up-rezzes regular 1080p Blurays to 4K resolution. This afternoon I was watching my Bluray of Robert Harris‘ Spartacus restoration, and it looked significantly sharper and more refined on the Samsung 4K than it does on my regular Oppo Bluray player, which is five or six years old. Plus the Samsung generates much louder sound.