Sony UBP-X800 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Sky_Captain]

The only glitch I've seen, was before the last firmware update and it could just have easily been a TV issue. I'd put the disc in before turning the TV on and when I selected the Sony's HDMI input, I was greeted by a black screen. Jumping from on of the other HDMI inputs and back again, solved it.

Compared to the hilarity involved in playing certain discs on my Xbox One S, that's nothing.

[maverick22]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Had an X800 for six months, haven't had a single "freeze" on any content.

Why did you get rid of it?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by maverick22

Why did you get rid of it?

Not got rid, not yet, but the OPPO has overriden both this and the Panny UB900 in my setup.

[Omegaice]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Not got rid, not yet, but the OPPO has overriden both this and the Panny UB900 in my setup.

Ya, I purchased my OPPO first & then picked up the X800 for my bedroom setup.

[maverick22]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Not got rid, not yet, but the OPPO has overriden both this and the Panny UB900 in my setup.

Ahh, gotcha, thanks. You think the Oppo is worth the extra cost over the Sony?

Anyone trust that cheaper Philips player?

[Omegaice]

Originally Posted by maverick22

Ahh, gotcha, thanks. You think the Oppo is worth the extra cost over the Sony?

Anyone trust that cheaper Philips player?

The OPPO is the top of the top, if you want to know more just hop over to the OPPO thread. The Phillips player is serviceable as a player. The X800 for $200, possibly cheaper come Black Friday is worth the money.

[Geoff D]

Is the OPPO worth it? Hell no. But it is the best all-round UHD/BD/DVD spinner on the market.

[EManT2200]

Originally Posted by maverick22

A lot of 1 star reviews on Amazon have me concerned as well. Blank screens, freezes, out of sync audio. My LG player is noisy but has none of those issues.

May have to research my next player a little more.

I've had my X800 for about 4 months now, not one single issue yet, and after the last update finally giving the X800 the ability to play 50hz video, I am even happier with it now.

[maverick22]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Is it right the player has problems updating firmware over the Internet. Someone posted they couldn’t, but USB method worked.

My local B.B. has the Sony open box for $180. Not sure I’d want to go that route though or just pay the extra $20 for brand new. They only have a 14 day return policy. Might want to PM at Target to get 30 day return policy. Got some thinking to do.

I question Philips’ reliability and support, but I have heard good things about it, and it will have DV support soon apparently. If the Sony supported DV it would be a no-brainer.

[mar3o]

I'm still trying to figure out why this player costs so much more on the UK Amazon site compared to other UHD players there. It's like 100 pounds more than other UHD players over there, yet the price of the X800 just dropped $100 in the US. Has the price not dropped over in the UK yet?

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by mrjr101

I returned the X800 simply because it doesn't provide an option to output in 10 bits. I'm one of those folks that my TV goes loco if the source outputs in 12 bit depth. I would seriously consider going back to this player if Sony provides a new firmware. I went to the Panasonic UB900 which has 10-bit option. Amazing player btw, it's just double the price.

Can anyone tell me if this would be an issue with my LG UHD LCD set (UH8500)? It claims to have a 10-bit panel but if you end up digging deep enough and talk to the right people (I did last year), it's really an 8-bit panel with dithering to get the billion colors it claims. Will this player have any compatibility issue with this in mind? What about deep color - would I need to enable that for my TV?

Another quick question that might seem silly - since I'd be importing this player from the UK, would there be any UHD disc compatibility issues? I know there are no UHD region restrictions, but being this would be a UK player, would the focus on firmware updates be for UHD discs sold in the UK, possibly leaving some US discs with playback issues that might get addressed on the US firmware but not the UK? And would updating the firmware be an issue since I'm in the US and the player is from the UK? Will it detect it's in the US and not update, or will it update based on the player itself regardless of where it is? I know I can always update over USB anyways but I was just curious.

I did check the latest UK firmware from their site and they list "Extends Ultra HD Blu-ray compatibility (Japan and North America)" in the list of improvements for the UK firmware. Does that mean extends UHD compatibility with Japan and North America discs? I'd hate to find out later that the UK player has issues with US UHD discs that the US player doesn't. Do all regions get the same compatibility updates?

[eddievanhalen]

I have the EU version which is the same as the UK version except for the plug. I live in Spain but 95% of my BD and UHD BD buying is from the US (the rest are UK releases) and I've had zero issues with US discs except for the BDs that are A region coded of course, but I play thoseon my ancient Region A Oppo BDP-93.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by eddievanhalen

I have the EU version which is the same as the UK version except for the plug. I live in Spain but 95% of my BD and UHD BD buying is from the US (the rest are UK releases) and I've had zero issues with US discs except for the BDs that are A region coded of course, but I play thoseon my ancient Region A Oppo BDP-93.

It seems Amazon won't ship this player to the US from Germany or France, but will from the UK. Odd.

[LordoftheRings]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I'm still trying to figure out why this player costs so much more on the UK Amazon site compared to other UHD players there. It's like 100 pounds more than other UHD players over there, yet the price of the X800 just dropped $100 in the US. Has the price not dropped over in the UK yet?

It's a mystery to me too.
When the price goes down in the USA Amazon, it goes up in the Canada Amazon:
• https://www.amazon.ca/Sony-UBP-X800-.../dp/B06XQXYG9L

There is no escape: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product.../10630138.aspx

Money in each country has different values; we just cannot compare.
The USA is a better place to live, when you like entertainment.
Hollywood is a hot bed. Electronics are hot, made in Malaysia.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

North American player from large mass-manufacture company in 'not playing 50Hz' shocker

Hold on, I thought this player handled PAL/50Hz content?

Dobyblue said a couple months ago, "There is no 1080i50 playback, there is no PAL playback. Advertising this with such an accent on the universal playback feature and not having the ability to play region free PAL DVDs and region free 1080i50 Blu-rays (converting to 1080i60 on the fly like all Samsung Blu-ray players have done since the BD-P1000) seems short-sighted."

The whole point of me importing this player from the UK would be to play both NTSC and PAL/50Hz content, converting to 60Hz on the fly, since my TV can't accept a 50Hz signal. I'm guessing the UK player should play both and output either 50Hz or 60Hz, but I want to triple-check before I make any decisions. Is it just the US version that doesn't play 50Hz content?

AVforums mentioned this in their review under "streaming":

"one useful feature of Sony players is that they are able to dynamically adjust the output signal based on the framerate of the content, so a 24/23.976 frames per second (fps) series or movie will be sent at 24Hz and anything at 30 fps at 60Hz. As a result playback will be as smooth and film-like as possible, although you will need to make sure you enable this feature in the Settings Menu as it’s off by default. However, Sony players aren't able to do this with 25 or 50 frames per second material so this type of content isn't as optimally displayed, although it is also less common on video streaming services which tend to be US-centric."

I guess I'm still a bit confused over what this player can do. If I play a region B blu-ray with PAL/50Hz content (like extras) on the UK version of the player, will it convert it smoothly to 1080p@60Hz/2160p@60Hz?

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Is the OPPO worth it? Hell no. But it is the best all-round UHD/BD/DVD spinner on the market.

Strictly UHD PQ speaking, would you say the Oppo has any advantage over the Sony in that regard? Not that I am remotely interested in buying one, I'm just interested why you decided to go for Oppo after all. DV got something to do with it perhaps?

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

I have to update this, for the 1080i50 playback I must have initially tried a region locked disc, I swear it didn't give a region message but just said disc not compatible.

Anyway, don't know what spurred me to retry, but I threw in an F1 season review that I know doesn't have region coding on it, and it says it's outputting at 1080p50. My Onkyo also says 1080p50 and is doing pass through of 1080p50 and my Viera plasma (VT60, North American model) is playing it fine.

I've since got the 2013 Wimbledon disc (Djokovich vs. Murray) and it's 1080i50 and also the Sony plays it fine outputting 1080p50.

Wonder if they updated it with the 178 update to include playback of 50Hz material because I believe it's not a hardware change on the inside.

So great news, I'm not even more likely to just keep this player.

So then I guess this does play PAL/50Hz content. So then can it convert it to 60Hz output? That's the big question I have. My LG doesn't display 50Hz so I need to make sure the UK version of this player can convert PAL/50Hz to 60Hz before I decide on this player.

[dixonhill]

I returned the SONY because of it's unability to fast forward or even pause MKV files from my NAS.
The OPPO 203 does this without any problems and can even play Dolby ATMOS in MKV!

..and can handle hard disks > 2TB

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by DJR662

Strictly UHD PQ speaking, would you say the Oppo has any advantage over the Sony in that regard? Not that I am remotely interested in buying one, I'm just interested why you decided to go for Oppo after all. DV got something to do with it perhaps?

For UHD it's a wash but the superior DVD handling (Panny 900 has some bad artefacts with 480i, the Sony is better but can't be easily multi regioned) and Dolby Vision support swayed it for the OPPO. It's got a very simple mod for Blu-ray multiregion too, should my other MR Panny give up the ghost. I've been interested in getting one but you can't exactly test drive these things and the U.K. price is vastly inflated, I also wanted to wait for the tics and bugs to be ironed out. Picked one up in the AV Forums classifieds for £500 which is about as cheap as it's gonna get over here.

Originally Posted by mar3o

Hold on, I thought this player handled PAL/50Hz content?

Dobyblue said a couple months ago, "There is no 1080i50 playback, there is no PAL playback. Advertising this with such an accent on the universal playback feature and not having the ability to play region free PAL DVDs and region free 1080i50 Blu-rays (converting to 1080i60 on the fly like all Samsung Blu-ray players have done since the BD-P1000) seems short-sighted."

The whole point of me importing this player from the UK would be to play both NTSC and PAL/50Hz content, converting to 60Hz on the fly, since my TV can't accept a 50Hz signal. I'm guessing the UK player should play both and output either 50Hz or 60Hz, but I want to triple-check before I make any decisions. Is it just the US version that doesn't play 50Hz content?

AVforums mentioned this in their review under "streaming":

"one useful feature of Sony players is that they are able to dynamically adjust the output signal based on the framerate of the content, so a 24/23.976 frames per second (fps) series or movie will be sent at 24Hz and anything at 30 fps at 60Hz. As a result playback will be as smooth and film-like as possible, although you will need to make sure you enable this feature in the Settings Menu as it’s off by default. However, Sony players aren't able to do this with 25 or 50 frames per second material so this type of content isn't as optimally displayed, although it is also less common on video streaming services which tend to be US-centric."

I guess I'm still a bit confused over what this player can do. If I play a region B blu-ray with PAL/50Hz content (like extras) on the UK version of the player, will it convert it smoothly to 1080p@60Hz/2160p@60Hz?

I was talking about the North American version in my post when I replied to doby's puzzlement. I dunno about you guys but outside of OPPO players I'd never assume/expect to have 50hz compatibility in a NA Blu-ray deck, and even in the UHD Blu specs the presence of 2160p25/50 is NOT mandatory for y'all.

BUT the UK player handles 50hz content just fine, as you'd expect. However there is NO kind of standards conversion to 60Hz that I can discern (again, not something I'd expect anyway outside of an OPPO) so I think you're gonna be disappointed.

[DJR662]

^^ Once the ZD9 gets the DV update, I would be interested in your opinion on those DV titles once you have been able to do comparisons.