Quote:
Originally Posted by anchor_man
UB820 is a crappy, low quality device made by Panasonic which we've had the displeasure of owning over the past several years. To see it get such positive reviews is frankly a mystery; here are some of the fun issues we experience on a daily basis with it:
[Show spoiler]
* Player takes almost 2 minutes to start playing a disc from power off.
* Does not allow skipping relentless copyright warnings and other spam from disc manufacturers.
* Dumb remote design with a soulless "netflix" button front and center which is triggered unintentionally.
* Upon inserting a previously watched movie, a prompt asks whether I want to "continue" the movie from where I last left off, which was the last several minutes with the credits rolling. This is beyond stupid.
* The eject button only sometimes works to retract the disc tray, other times it must be forcefully pushed in, which also defies all reason.
* Device caption menus make no sense, are divorced from actual disc caption features.
* Fails to play my 4K copy of 2001 Space Odyssey.
* Says "Powered by Java" on the back which actually explains much of the dysfunction.
I guess one positive thing would be that it has continued to work beyond the warranty period, which deserves praise in today's market. Still, our next device will likely be a Sony. |
As pr0darek pointed out, much depends on disc authoring. The continue option is purely based on whether the disc was created with that feature or not. (some studios just don't turn that on) Skipping items depends on the disc as well, though region-unlocked players can bypass that. Java is only used if the disc itself uses BD-Java; being part of the Blu-ray spec, all players must be able to run Java. Even discs can be created faulty, causing a given player to choke on them. For the rest:
- Startup time? While you are a bit exaggerated here, turning off Quick Start does increase boot time. Sony is identical here.
- Remotes from many manufacturers have sponsored buttons. Sony is identical and also has a Netflix button on theirs. Get over it or buy another remote.
- Eject on remote and top of player work 100% of the time, but prolonged boot times (Quick Start off) can make it inactive for a time. Sony is also identical here.
- Every manufacturer has different menu designs, which can have learning curves, but allowing you to dim and reposition subtitles and captions elevate the Panny above others. (Sony does not do that)
- A single disc failing can be a number of issues: like pr0darek, my 2001 plays just fine in my 820. Even if the Sony played it, I would return yours if you've wiped off any residue and it's still failing.
The bonus of moving to a Sony player is, unlike the Panny, Dolby Vision requires manual toggling (leaving it on forces everything, even SD content, into DV), and you get lovely freezes on triple-layered discs after a random period of normal operation. Definitely worth changing to if those features quicken your pulse. I have both a Panny and Sony with first-hand experience for both feature-sets.
Yes, each player has their quirks, with some actually helping. E.g., the Panny top-menu trick gets around many region-locks.
Rock on.