Samsung BD-C8500M Blu-ray player/Freeview HD recorder review

Freeview HD recording and Blu-ray playback: has Samsung created the ultimate all-in-one?

Samsung BD-C8500M
Although it's not ready for 3D Blu-ray, this deck has just about every other base covered

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

With such few recording functions, the giant-sized HDD of the BD-C8500M does lend it an air of 'World Cup cash-in' (theoretically all 64 games could have been recorded in HD), though elsewhere this is a generous, versatile and well thought-out machine.

Samsung bd-c8500m

We liked

Fitted with an easy to use interface, this is a versatile deck; as well as integrating well with external media, it seamlessly connects wirelessly to both Internet@TV content and to PCs and Macs on the same network.

With plenty to experiment with and some useful features (such as its twin CAM slots), Samsung hasn't ignored the box's core duties; picture quality impresses from all sources.

We disliked

The BD-C8500 isn't a Freeview+ HD recorder, which is a huge chance missed and severely restricts the usefulness of the HDD. An overly complex, cluttered remote is the price to pay for its multi-platform talents.

Final verdict

Despite its ability to record from Freeview HD, this box's huge HDD will likely be used just as much as a hub for your digital media, though its excellent Wi-Fi connection to both PC and Mac computers – along with its song indexing of CDs it rips to that HDD – means its usefulness is questionable unless you want to rip an entire CD collection.

Essentially a Blu-ray player with a separate Freeview HD tuner alongside, the BD-C8500M seems a way to get the latest tech into a living room in one box rather than the all-in-one HD player-cum-recorder it should be.

If you're after the last word Freeview HD recording, you'd better look elsewhere – or at least consider the smaller hard disk (and price) or the BD-C8200M.

Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview

Jamie Carter

Jamie is a freelance tech, travel and space journalist based in the UK. He’s been writing regularly for Techradar since it was launched in 2008 and also writes regularly for Forbes, The Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Sky & Telescope and the Sky At Night magazine as well as other Future titles T3, Digital Camera World, All About Space and Space.com. He also edits two of his own websites, TravGear.com and WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com that reflect his obsession with travel gear and solar eclipse travel. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners (Springer, 2015),