Sony UBP-X800 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by jala12

I tested Transformers The Last Knight earlier today and it seems that certain scenes also have some color banding issuses in them, such as with the sky during the scene at the beginning when Merlin is asking for help. Also noticed it on Cade's truck as he stops and talks to the chief guy while driving.

After a little more testing I've found that it may have something to do with the player using 4:4:4 or maybe the TV's UHD Color mode. I popped in Pacific Rim again with that scene at the foggy beach and aside from some banding, I also noticed what looked like artifacting of some kind in the clouds. I'm still not entirely certain what's going on, so any help on this color banding issue would be welcome.

The player sends a constant 12-bit signal out AFAIK and that combined with 4:4:4 can overwhelm the processing inside certain TVs. You mentioned 4:4:4, have you tried the player on 4:2:2 and turning Deep Colour off on the player also?

[eddievanhalen]

I have the output of my X-800 set to 4:2:2 which is the prefered color space by my Samsung set. I know by doing this: set output to Auto, and then changed to 4:4:4, there was a brief picture cut, screen went black and then picture returned. Set output back to Auto, there was again a brief picture cut, screen went black and then picture came back, after that I changed output to 4:2:2 and there was no picture cut and screen didn't go black. I did the same with RGB and it happened the same as with 4:4:4, so I understand 4:2:2 must be the prefered color space of my HDR Samsung set.
But I'm curious about something, doing some testing with HD BDs I've noticed some of them, not to say all of them seem to look cleaner by setting output to RGB. Why can be that?
Can an RGB video signal be 10 bit? Does RGB really works with HDR? On my T.V. set it seems to work as both player and T.V. set say "HDR" by playing an UHD BD with HDR with video output set to RGB, but I guess this is not the right setting as I've been told T.V. sets do some video processing on 4:2:2 color space before converting this internally to RGB to feed the display.
What do you think Geoff D.?

[SlaughterX]

The refurb unit is back up @ BB.com for $160. I am tempted, but something inside me says even though almost half off is a good deal, this is still almost as much as buying another Xbox One and doesn't support DV.

I would make use of the dual HDMI output since my other AVR is a dated 4K receiver that doesn't have the latest HDMI spec. Also it would be nice to have a universal player again to play the handful of SACDs and DVD-As that I own. Still a much better choice for me than buying an Xbox One X for $500 or the Oppo.

[jala12]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The player sends a constant 12-bit signal out AFAIK and that combined with 4:4:4 can overwhelm the processing inside certain TVs. You mentioned 4:4:4, have you tried the player on 4:2:2 and turning Deep Colour off on the player also?

Tried 4:2:2 and it seemed to reduce some of the banding. Haven't tried turning DC off yet. Do I lose the best settings if I turn it to 4:2:2 with DC off? Because besides the banding in open sky scenes, I really like the colors that pop through the HDR + current color settings.

[Geoff D]

No, you still get the proper colour gamut, HDR etc. Deep Colour relates to bit depth, NOT the colour gamut itself.

[jala12]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

No, you still get the proper colour gamut, HDR etc. Deep Colour relates to bit depth, NOT the colour gamut itself.

I see. What would be affected or what would I be losing by turning off Deep Color?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by jala12

I see. What would be affected or what would I be losing by turning off Deep Color?

bit depth in this context relates to how many gradations of colour an image will contain, though the actual colour gamut itself is defined separately. 8 bit is 16-235 levels, 10-bit is 64-940 and 12-bit is 256-3760 (video levels, not PC). Ideally you want to send as pure a signal as possible to the display, so 8-bit Blu-ray will output as 8-bit, 10-bit UHD as 10-bit and so on. As you can see, upsampling either of those to 12-bit presents a LOT more information to the receiving display and when coupled with full 4:4:4 chroma (also upsampled from the 4:2:0 that's actually stored on BD and UHD discs) is what sends certain displays into a tizzy because they don't have enough grunt to process it properly - and all for an upsampling process which can't add information that wasn't there previously.

That said I think the Sony outputs 12-bit for UHD regardless so turning off Deep Colour won't help for 4K playback, though it should stop Blu-rays from being needlessly upsampled.

[jala12]

Hm, that certainly clears up a couple of things. Thanks for the help! I'll try turning off DC and see how it affects those particular scenes again.

That said I think the Sony outputs 12-bit for UHD regardless so turning off Deep Colour won't help for 4K playback, though it should stop Blu-rays from being needlessly upsampled.

What is the drawback from normal BDs being upsampled in this manner? I haven't really noticed any particular issues yet so far, but that may also be because I don't know what to look for.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by jala12

Hm, that certainly clears up a couple of things. Thanks for the help! I'll try turning off DC and see how it affects those particular scenes again.



What is the drawback from normal BDs being upsampled in this manner? I haven't really noticed any particular issues yet so far, but that may also be because I don't know what to look for.

It's more of a case of if it's doing the 12-bit upsampling properly then you shouldn't notice anything amiss, but it means there's more potential for errors nonetheless because you don't need to uprate 8-bit to 12-bit at all.

[vincentric]

Got this player recently and have been putting it through its paces. Have checked and tested several 3D and 4K discs and to simply put, have encountered no issues with playback, particularly love how quietly it plays every UHD have thrown at it so far.

Have also noticed the same HDR10 improvements with the X800 that I previously saw with the LG UP970 but also just as well with the LG, the most problematic video anomalies I've seen on my end on the OLED, such as those in Miss Peregrine, remain problematic on the Sony.

And also similar to the LG, the X800 contains a very basic and plain looking user interface that gets the job done but unlike the LG, I enjoy how the Sony displays more display info such as audio and video bitrates.

I'd still like to torture test it a bit more before giving a final verdict but as of now the X800 is looking like a keeper. It's lack of DV is a non-issue for me.

[mzupeman]

Originally Posted by vincentric

Got this player recently and have been putting it through its paces. Have checked and tested several 3D and 4K discs and to simply put, have encountered no issues with playback, particularly love how quietly it plays every UHD have thrown at it so far.

Have also noticed the same HDR10 improvements with the X800 that I previously saw with the LG UP970 but also just as well with the LG, the most problematic video anomalies I've seen on my end on the OLED, such as those in Miss Peregrine, remain problematic on the Sony.

And also similar to the LG, the X800 contains a very basic and plain looking user interface that gets the job done but unlike the LG, I enjoy how the Sony displays more display info such as audio and video bitrates.

I'd still like to torture test it a bit more before giving a final verdict but as of now the X800 is looking like a keeper. It's lack of DV is a non-issue for me.

Got mine in late February and my impressions are pretty solid as well. There was a really disappointing issue at first which caused nasty blocking to occur regularly on Fox titles, but they quickly resolved it. Ever since, I've only had one minor, brief freeze-up while watching something. Can't really complain!

[IronFist]

I just bought this tonight from Best Buy. I put it in my cart to see the price and it was $218. I added Unforgiven to get the -$1 off for store pick up and it lowered it from 24.99 to 19.99, so about $250 after taxes. Can't wait to get it up and running

[eddievanhalen]

I wonder why players keep on having the option of HDMI RGB output. I have watched some BDs with my X-800 HDMI set to RGB on my Samsung 50" HDR 4K set and sometimes they seem to look "cleaner" than the prefered color space of my set which is 4:2:2.
With UHD BD there seems to be no difference and I fear that by outputting RGB video with HDR material the player or the T.V. set is limited to 8 bit and not 10 bit that is the native bit depth of HDR10. These are only tests I've done, my X-800 is ALWAYS set to HDMI 4:2:2.

[StingingVelvet]

One reason to have an RGB setting is that it can allow the TV to expand to PC levels of color, i.e. 0-256(?). If the player only sends YcBcCr or whatever then some TVs (like my Samsung) won't allow PC levels.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by eddievanhalen

I wonder why players keep on having the option of HDMI RGB output.

Many computer monitors are RGB only so having RGB out allows the use of these display devices. I would not use RGB on display devices that have YCbCr and RGB because YCbCr is on the disc (and broadcast, cable, satellite, etc.).

[eddievanhalen]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

One reason to have an RGB setting is that it can allow the TV to expand to PC levels of color, i.e. 0-256(?). If the player only sends YcBcCr or whatever then some TVs (like my Samsung) won't allow PC levels.

Is there any real and documented benefit to feeding a 4K HDR set RGB signal instead of Component either 4:2:2 or 4:4:4?
As I said before, to me some BDs seem to look cleaner setting HDMI output to RGB.

[Aragorn the Elfstone]

I guess this is a good place to admit defeat.

I placed an order this evening for the Sony UBP-X800, effectively joining the 4K fray.

My television (Samsung JS-8500) does not sufficiently handle HDR (and my surround receiver doesn't handle it at all), so I'll be using SDR conversion, but it's become apparent to me that staying on the sidelines will leave me unable to enjoy many remasters/restorations that will come out over the next couple years.

I went ahead and purchased my first two UHDs (excluding the UHD of Crouching Tiger I bought last year for the cover art ) - The Mummy (1999) and Blade Runner.

[StingingVelvet]

Oooh, watch out for black crush. That was a big issue when I used the X800 in SDR.

[Aragorn the Elfstone]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Oooh, watch out for black crush. That was a big issue when I used the X800 in SDR.

Well, not much of a choice, really. I can't really justify spending more on a player, especially since I'm mostly getting this to play 4K exclusive remasters (for now, anyway).

It is what it is.

[Aragorn the Elfstone]

A bit of an update now that I've got my player...

I was surprised to find that the back of the player actually has 2 HDMI outputs, which certainly solves my audio problem. A pleasant surprise indeed.

I was disappointed that converting to SDR didn't yield a more pleasing result. It's definitely a mixed bag. So I decided to just go ahead and watch in HDR. This would also be a compromise if not for the fact that, while playing around with my settings, I discovered that bumping up Dynamic Contrast to medium gives a satisfactory brightness to the picture (far more than I would have expected).

I'm sure I'll be told that I shouldn't have such a setting enabled (and normally I wouldn't), but as leaving it off results in PQ that is far too dim, I'll have to just settle for making an exception here until the day comes when I have a Premium set.

Watched The Mummy tonight (first time in years - what a joy it is ), and was blown away by the presentation. Very filmic. I haven't been a fan of HDR, but after making the changes to my settings, I'll admit I can see what you guys go on about. The film positively glowed.