Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[HDTV1080P]

That is a good price to see a $150 off the Panasonic DP-UB820. Was $499.99 and now $349.99. For those that do not need SACD and DVD-Audio playback support and just need standard audio CD, DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray, the Panasonic at $349.99 is a excellent player. The Panasonic has the following features that Sony does not offer: Panasonic has auto Dolby Vision HDR, HDR10+, tone mapping, and true 7.1 analog audio outputs.

The top of the line Panasonic DP-UB9000 is on sale for $899.99 (normally $999.99).

[punisher]

I grabbed one myself....coming Friday

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Got one from Value Electronics as I wanted to buy from and support a local dealer. My early Xmas gift! When my Oppo konks out, I'll have a spare.

[teddyballgame]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

I have to beg to differ. Upon looking at a few movie titles and comparing between the 1,000 nit setting (OLED) vs. 1,500 nit setting (Super High Luminance), I came to the conclusion that the 1,500 nit setting is better.

Got my hands the Spears and Munsil UHD benchmark disc today. I studied the 4000 nit demo scene for a bit...going back and forth setting HDR optimizer to OLED or Super High Luminance display. I was surprised but I think you're right that letting LG C9 handle the first 1500 nits is a good idea. Super high luminance + LG's DTM both set to ON looked to be a closer approximation of what I was seeing with DV FEL rendition. I noticed more depth to the picture and the colors stay a little more faithful as well. Cheers

[trekky76]

I don't use DTM but instead have peak brightness setting on low. It's fine if you use either but not both.
But I disagree with your streaming comparison. Just take any Dolby Vision UHD and play it with DV off. The brightness will stay the same but once you enable DTM the brightness will be significantly higher. This tells me that DTM just places the tone mapping curve higher to create an illusion of more brightness. The C9 actually has the very same DTM setting by default with the Cinema Home DV preset. Whatever streaming is doing is besides the point as it's a world of its own. In any case, DTM is just another incorrectly named LG setting.

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

I think people need to realize that these settings are merely suggestions. You have to think that when the 820 came out, TV tone mapping algorithms were not that great. This is why Panasonic set their OLED setting to 1,000 nits. Now, TV tone mapping algorithms have gotten better. Are they perfect? No, but at least they are good enough to where we can now set the Optimizer at the highest setting. Again, I understand why Vincent would say that you shouldn't have Dynamic Tone Mapping "On" if that's all you had and a UHD player that wasn't the 820. But with the 820, you can leave it on and engage the Optimizer to take care of the tone mapping of higher nit content.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by trekky76

I don't use DTM but instead have peak brightness setting on low. It's fine if you use either but not both.
But I disagree with your streaming comparison. Just take any Dolby Vision UHD and play it with DV off. The brightness will stay the same but once you enable DTM the brightness will be significantly higher. This tells me that DTM just places the tone mapping curve higher to create an illusion of more brightness. The C9 actually has the very same DTM setting by default with the Cinema Home DV preset. Whatever streaming is doing is besides the point as it's a world of its own. In any case, DTM is just another incorrectly named LG setting.

For one thing, it's recommended that you have the peak brightness set t0 High on an LG C9 to achieve the highest possible peak brightness possible from your TV.

As to the brightness of DV vs. when you have DV turned off and the DTM set to "On," DV has it's own tone mapping written within the movie. Instead of the TV tone mapping, the algorithm set within the movie that a director or director of photography set will do the tone mapping. It's exactly what they are wanting you to see. And from what a lot of people have said on here, if your TV does a great job tone mapping, then you won't see too much of a difference between DV and HDR 10. And the LG C9 does a great job, not perfect, but great job.

On top of that, you can see from the post above from teddyballgame that it seems from the Spears and Muncil UHD Disc that everything seems to checkout with the method I'm using, with the TV tone mapping till 1,500 nits and the 820 doing the rest.

I encourage you to look at several films and compare them, especially if you have any Disney films. They are all at 1,000 nits are below so no matter the setting on the 820 (OLED or Super High Luminance), the TV will tone map the movie. Switch between DTM on and off. I guarantee you that you will notice colors popping more. Without DTM on, the movie looked lifeless. But with it on, it brought the movie back to life.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

For one thing, it's recommended that you have the peak brightness set t0 High on an LG C9 to achieve the highest possible peak brightness possible from your TV.

As to the brightness of DV vs. when you have DV turned off and the DTM set to "On," DV has it's own tone mapping written within the movie. Instead of the TV tone mapping, the algorithm set within the movie that a director or director of photography set will do the tone mapping. It's exactly what they are wanting you to see. And from what a lot of people have said on here, if your TV does a great job tone mapping, then you won't see too much of a difference between DV and HDR 10. And the LG C9 does a great job, not perfect, but great job.

On top of that, you can see from the post above from teddyballgame that it seems from the Spears and Muncil UHD Disc that everything seems to checkout with the method I'm using, with the TV tone mapping till 1,500 nits and the 820 doing the rest.

I encourage you to look at several films and compare them, especially if you have any Disney films. They are all at 1,000 nits are below so no matter the setting on the 820 (OLED or Super High Luminance), the TV will tone map the movie. Switch between DTM on and off. I guarantee you that you will notice colors popping more. Without DTM on, the movie looked lifeless. But with it on, it brought the movie back to life.

You likely just like what LG does with it's tonemapping, but just to reiterate, the Panasonic optimizer faithfully follows the correct EOTF and does not alter the image in anyway. The DTM of LG is known to raise mids, black levels, and also sometimes crush in order to resolve more detail etc.

I've done countless tests, on content, more than I want to admit (and my wife gets annoyed, haha) and come to similar conclusions as Vincent.

[teddyballgame]

Originally Posted by pbz06

You likely just like what LG does with it's tonemapping, but just to reiterate, the Panasonic optimizer faithfully follows the correct EOTF and does not alter the image in anyway. The DTM of LG is known to raise mids, black levels, and also sometimes crush in order to resolve more detail etc.

I've done countless tests, on content, more than I want to admit (and my wife gets annoyed, haha) and come to similar conclusions as Vincent.

I know what you mean about the tests lol. What TV do you use with the Panny btw?

It looked to me that letting my C9 map to 1500 and having Panasonic do the heavy lifting for everything higher came pretty close to the DV demo. I'll probably take another looksie with fresh eyes but.. Either way looks pretty good so it's not a big fuss, this function isn't called into play much seeing as there isn't a lot of high nit content out there. It would be interesting to know more about LG's DTM though. How it worked with earlier models and if the CX does it differently today.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

You likely just like what LG does with it's tonemapping, but just to reiterate, the Panasonic optimizer faithfully follows the correct EOTF and does not alter the image in anyway. The DTM of LG is known to raise mids, black levels, and also sometimes crush in order to resolve more detail etc.

I've done countless tests, on content, more than I want to admit (and my wife gets annoyed, haha) and come to similar conclusions as Vincent.

Well, the Optimiser follows the EOTF to 50% of the original HDR signal i.e. 100 nits in order to preserve APL, then follows its own (far more linear) custom curve from there. I did these comparisons a while back, 0-100% luminance readings from the various modes with the Optimiser applied vs the untouched output from the TV.

In each case the test pattern has the same values, it's just the mastering metadata that's different so it'll trigger different responses from the Optimiser, because if you have the Optimiser set to OLED(1000)/Medium to High (1000)/Super Bright (1500) and run a 1000-nit pattern then the Optimiser won't do anything.

Untouched HDR brightness curve (from my calibrated HDR mode on the ZD9) is in red, the various Optimised outputs are in yellow. For orientation, 50% is roughly 100 nits, 75% is roughly 1000 nits according to the absolute values of the PQ EOTF.


Optimiser = Basic (500 nits), 1000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Basic (500 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Medium/High (1000 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Super (1500 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Well, the Optimiser follows the EOTF to 50% of the original HDR signal i.e. 100 nits in order to preserve APL, then follows its own (far more linear) custom curve from there. I did these comparisons a while back, 0-100% luminance readings from the various modes with the Optimiser applied vs the untouched output from the TV.

In each case the test pattern has the same values, it's just the mastering metadata that's different so it'll trigger different responses from the Optimiser, because if you have the Optimiser set to OLED(1000)/Medium to High (1000)/Super Bright (1500) and run a 1000-nit pattern then the Optimiser won't do anything.

Untouched HDR brightness curve (from my calibrated HDR mode on the ZD9) is in red, the various Optimised outputs are in yellow. For orientation, 50% is roughly 100 nits, 75% is roughly 1000 nits according to the absolute values of the PQ EOTF.

[Show spoiler]

Optimiser = Basic (500 nits), 1000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Basic (500 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Medium/High (1000 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:




Optimiser = Super (1500 nits), 4000-nit mastering metadata:

[Show spoiler]

So... basically, you would benefit from a Super-Duper (2000 nits) setting since without the Optimiser you don't see any difference between 90% and 100%, right?
What pattern did you use, 10% window?

[Geoff D]

10% windows, yes. The thing about the ZD9 is that although it extends to almost 2000 nits of (calibrated) brightness it doesn't extended to 2000 nits of colour, the colour starts to clip at 1200-ish nits so even the Super Bright 1500-nit level isn't as good a fit as you'd think. So if I have to use the Optimiser (which I haven't for a while now thanks to Dolby Vision's growing ubiquity) I generally leave it on 'Medium to High' to bring things down to 1000 nits which my TV can show in "1:1" form.

I even like to use the Basic 500-nit mode on some discs because of how it turns the steep PQ EOTF into a milder SDR-style curve, as seen in the first graph. I don't like how older 35mm movies get blasted with light by some studios and if they're poorly encoded to boot then the HDR makes them look very 'electronic', e.g. Apollo 13 and ID4. But taming that HDR brightness makes a world of difference, the nasty artefacts in the highlights are greatly reduced and it just looks more like film than a blocky digital mess.

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

10% windows, yes.

How did you play them on the 820?

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I even like to use the Basic 500-nit mode on some discs because of how it turns the steep PQ EOTF into a milder SDR-style curve, as seen in the first graph. I don't like how older 35mm movies get blasted with light by some studios and if they're poorly encoded to boot then the HDR makes them look very 'electronic', e.g. Apollo 13 and ID4. But taming that HDR brightness makes a world of difference, the nasty artefacts in the highlights are greatly reduced and it just looks more like film than a blocky digital mess.

And have you come up with some kind of rule-of-thumb based on the metadata info display on how to tweak the HDR brightness or do you do it case-by-case basis?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by rickardl

And have you come up with some kind of rule-of-thumb based on the metadata info display on how to tweak the HDR brightness or do you do it case-by-case basis?

Case by case. Discs from Disnee, Universal and Paramount are still being mastered to top out at 1000 nits or thereabouts, so even if the latter two don't have DV the TV has no problems with 'natively' mapping them. Warners and Sony on the other hand usually go for 4000-nit masterings, not necessarily hitting that mark in the case of the former but they often have DV anyway. But Sony very rarely use DV and as they're the kings of the Light Cannon™ approach it's usually on their 35mm catalogue discs that I employ the Optimiser, the way they boost the midrange makes the grain stand out so much and not in a good way.

Originally Posted by rickardl

How did you play them on the 820?

USB. They're the HDR10 test patterns from Ryan Masciola.

[DOULG1VEN]

For OLED TV's is the general consensus to use the 1500 nit or 1000 nit setting on the player? of course the 1000 (oled) makes sense as their max brightness is usually around 800, but seems like some people in this thread say 1500 looks better...

[wxman2003]

Originally Posted by DOULG1VEN

For OLED TV's is the general consensus to use the 1500 nit or 1000 nit setting on the player? of course the 1000 (oled) makes sense as their max brightness is usually around 800, but seems like some people in this thread say 1500 looks better...

It will depend on your TV. I doubt my 4 year old LG E6 really has DTM for HDR10, or if it does, it's really poor, so I set the Panny to 1000 nits.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by wxman2003

It will depend on your TV. I doubt my 4 year old LG E6 really has DTM for HDR10, or if it does, it's really poor, so I set the Panny to 1000 nits.

And that makes perfect sense. If it's older and doesn't tone map very well, then I would go with 1,000 nits OLED setting. If it's great at it, then I would say 1,500 nit setting would be good. I did enough testing to feel like having it at 1,500 works for my C9. Mind you, it's calibrated, so it may look different to other people.

[raybestos]

Originally Posted by nachoju95

Hi.
Is there anyone who has the DP-UB820K version, and has installed the Enhanced Firmware" from regionfreedom.com ? Does the external subtitles function work well?

Thanks!!

I'm tempted to get this player, especially now since it is on sale for $349, but it appears the lack of lossless audio format support (DTS-HD, etc) in .mkv and raw .m2ts files is a total deal killer

I also assume the 820 won't play an mkv with embedded Dolby vision inside the mkv track? I believe the Oppo 203 is the only player which will accomplish this, but I might be wrong. Hopefully I am wrong. Can anyone please answer this question definitively?

Even the Enhanced firmware, which you've linked to (THANKS, by the way!), does not remove this limitation. It seems such an artificial limitation, and like it would be really simple to lift the restriction.

Even a legitimate new firmware release could enable it to play lossless audio in container files. Ridiculous! A $500 player should have this capability, for sure.

Or, have I missed something, and such a firmware has already officially been released?

[WKoA13]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

And that makes perfect sense. If it's older and doesn't tone map very well, then I would go with 1,000 nits OLED setting. If it's great at it, then I would say 1,500 nit setting would be good. I did enough testing to feel like having it at 1,500 works for my C9. Mind you, it's calibrated, so it may look different to other people.

Interesting. I have a Sony A8H. Wonder what the 1500 setting plus the Sony's "advanced contrast" setting would look like (I assume the Advanced Contrast is their version of LG's DTM?).

[teddyballgame]

Originally Posted by WKoA13

Interesting. I have a Sony A8H. Wonder what the 1500 setting plus the Sony's "advanced contrast" setting would look like (I assume the Advanced Contrast is their version of LG's DTM?).

Sony's version of what LG calls DTM is likely baked into their X1 video processor. It might not be available to be selectively turned on or off. It's just something that takes place behind the curtains. Maybe a Sony guy can tell us for sure.


No idea what the "advanced contrast" setting is on Sony but if its anything like LG's "dynamic contrast" setting you're better off avoiding it.