Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by elwaylite

So on a title Like Halloween 2018, and it being less than 500 nits CLL, using OLED setting, is HDR Optimizer doing anything?

Probably not, because you already told the player your display can do more than 500 nits. So it should be 1:1 the whole way!

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

In other news, I noticed some banding on HDR greyscale ramps when the HDR Optimiser is engaged. This is something that's always been in the back of my mind re: the Optimiser, whether it had enough of an overhead with bit depth to be able to truly process these images in a 'lossless' fashion, and unfortunately it definitely has an effect, visible in both test patterns (dem ramps) and real world content.

This isn't related to the actual tone mapping itself of the Optimiser because this happens when the Optimiser circuit is engaged and the image isn't being outwardly modified at all, e.g. playing 1000-nit MDL content on the 1500-nit Super High mode. There's no objectively measurable difference on such content re: mapping or light levels with it on or off, but simply by turning the circuit 'on' the image is being routed thru that processing, and it shows.

It's REALLY hard to capture the ramps in a photo, all they do is come out looking awful either way but you'll just have to take my word for it that the ramps are smooth as buttah without it. I looked at some real world content instead, stuff that I know from recent discussions in the UHD movies threads that can be tipped into bandingsville if the processing is throttling the bit depth somewhere. I checked the final shot of Exodus on UHD disc where they're all walking into the distance with the bright sky overhead, something that Velvet mentioned, and while the gradations look rather good with the Optimiser off there's a faint but definite 'rainbow' effect that occurs with the Optimiser on, even though this title isn't being remapped at all (MaxCLL o nit, MaxMDL 1100-nit)

Another example is the Sony UHD disc of Blade Runner 2049 which had some quite vocal protests from some members who could see bad banding on their TVs, whereas it looked *slightly* questionable on mine but nothing overtly murderous. The MaxMDL is 4000 nits but the MaxCLL is 457 nits so there's no remapping going on here by the player with the Optimiser on but, again, banding in some scenes is quite pronounced with it enabled. This I did manage to get a photo of, make of it what you will (factoring in the extra compression from the image hoster):

Optimiser OFF



Optimiser ON



It might be hard to make out but there's a definite 'rainbow' effect in the ON pic about three-quarters of the way up, as well as visible false contouring in the 'hump' just below it. I've yet to check this with content that has better-defined gradations and I'm fairly certain that it won't be too obvious because a better source = cleaner processing thereof, 'twas ever thus, but with stuff that runs out of bit depth real fast then it's not a pretty sight.

Yes, I'm running the Panny in upsampled 12-bit output BUT I've checked this with the 10-bit priority output as well and the exact same effects are visible. And double yes, people will say "well, don't leave it on then with BR2049 if you don't need to do any remapping!" but that's not the point as I can also see the banding on a 0-10000 nit greyscale ramp. I've used those specific examples of actual content to show that this is a quirk with the Optimiser's processing pathway, regardless of it doing any remapping or not.

Boy, I bet y'all are SO glad I bought one of these.

Interesting. I never saw any banding with the SDR2020 output. I could definitely see there being issues with a 10000 nit ramp though, that is A LOT to squeeze in. Do you see it with 4000 and 1000 nit ramps? I wonder if any of the other settings in the HDR Optimizer setup helps.

Also, I'd be curious for you to try SDR2020 on your flat panel. Just set it up for a 2.4 gamma. When you turn the optimizer ON, you should be able to take the dynamic range slider almost entirely to the left since you'd have so much light to work with (your backlight should be the same as with HDR if possible). Then see if you see the same banding.

[Waboman]

This optimizer with all its settings is way over my pay grade.

[MEB]

Well, I've got one significant gripe with the UB9000.... If I put a disc in, load it up to the start of the movie, and then put the player in pause, after only 15-20 minutes the player shuts itself off. It won't hold in pause mode. I can't find a setting that allows me to change that behavior. That's VERY disappointing.

My UB900 will hold most discs in pause (right at the start of the movie) for hours.

When we entertain in the Booth Bijou Garage Theater, I queue up the movie on Blu-ray 30 minutes to an hour before our guests arrive. Then I switch over to my HTPC and play some pre-movie slideshows and entrance music. After we are seated for the film I'll switch back to Blu-ray and play the film. For both movies we showed today, the UB9000 went completely into shutdown mode. When I switched to the player it had to load the disc all over again, forcing our guests to see all the menus stuff, film rating, FBI warning, whatever.

If this can't be fixed with a setting change, I'll have to consider keeping the UB900 in the gear stack specifically for the Garage Theater. Boo!

Mark

[danny24]

Originally Posted by MEB

Well, I've got one significant gripe with the UB9000.... If I put a disc in, load it up to the start of the movie, and then put the player in pause, after only 15-20 minutes the player shuts itself off. It won't hold in pause mode. I can't find a setting that allows me to change that behavior. That's VERY disappointing.

My UB900 will hold most discs in pause (right at the start of the movie) for hours.

When we entertain in the Booth Bijou Garage Theater, I queue up the movie on Blu-ray 30 minutes to an hour before our guests arrive. Then I switch over to my HTPC and play some pre-movie slideshows and entrance music. After we are seated for the film I'll switch back to Blu-ray and play the film. For both movies we showed today, the UB9000 went completely into shutdown mode. When I switched to the player it had to load the disc all over again, forcing our guests to see all the menus stuff, film rating, FBI warning, whatever.

If this can't be fixed with a setting change, I'll have to consider keeping the UB900 in the gear stack specifically for the Garage Theater. Boo!

Mark

This was in the user manual page 37, troubleshoot section.

"This unit is turned off automatically.
To save on electricity, this unit is turned off
automatically depending on the media if there
is no button operation for about 20 minutes
when not playing back (such as when paused
or displaying the menu, displaying still
pictures, etc.)."

It does not offer a way to keep this from happening.

[DJR662]

Yeah, I had mention this before about the 820 (and the previous 900) automatically shutting down after a certain period of inactivity.

I don't understand why there is still no option to turn it off. You would think consumers are perfectly able to make up their own mind whether they would find this useful or not.

[lgans316]

There is a video on YouTube comparing UB820 and UB9000 side by side. Its an interesting video worth checking.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Thanks for the tip about Sicario, not that I'll use the SDR2020 output but that the 'real' peak is 1000 nits so I won't need to engage the Optimiser. Any more that have 1000-ish inside a 4000 mastering that don't show the MaxCLL in the on-disc metadata?

So just to simplify things a bit here, in the end, how would you recommend using the Optimizer with the ZD9?

Leave it off for 1000 nits content and for anything else use the "basic" instead of the "super high" mode? Also I take it you didn't change any of the other optimizer settings like dynamic range adjustment for example?

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Interesting. I never saw any banding with the SDR2020 output. I could definitely see there being issues with a 10000 nit ramp though, that is A LOT to squeeze in. Do you see it with 4000 and 1000 nit ramps? I wonder if any of the other settings in the HDR Optimizer setup helps.

Also, I'd be curious for you to try SDR2020 on your flat panel. Just set it up for a 2.4 gamma. When you turn the optimizer ON, you should be able to take the dynamic range slider almost entirely to the left since you'd have so much light to work with (your backlight should be the same as with HDR if possible). Then see if you see the same banding.

Kris, I finally got around of properly setting up my Sony 385ES last month (in conjunction with an ALR screen). I also had it calibrated for both SDR and HDR. I am still using HDR output with the Panansonic though and I must say I really think it looks great.

On the Sony I have HDR contrast set to max, low lamp mode (I try to avoid using high for as long as possible), ACE is off, brightness/color/hue is at 50, D65 and the DI is set to full at 59. On the Pana the optimizer is set to projector ofcourse with toggling the dynamic range adjustment setting between 2 and 4 depending on the content. I also tried the SDR2020 setting with a 2.2 and 2.4 gamma, but I think it looks kind of washed out/too bright real quick. I played around with the brightness setting to get back a good contrast, but somehow I could't really get it right to my liking. Perhaps I need to take more time experiencing with this but since I was very content with the picture in HDR output mode already, I just left it at that.

Am I correct in saying that by using SDR2020, the main advantage would be bypassing the Sony HDR curve in order to get a brighter picture while at the same time being able to get more shadow details as much as the projector allows?

[elwaylite]

If you have it paused waiting on something, just walk by and hit the status or playback info button every now and then to keep it alive.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Interesting. I never saw any banding with the SDR2020 output. I could definitely see there being issues with a 10000 nit ramp though, that is A LOT to squeeze in. Do you see it with 4000 and 1000 nit ramps? I wonder if any of the other settings in the HDR Optimizer setup helps.

Also, I'd be curious for you to try SDR2020 on your flat panel. Just set it up for a 2.4 gamma. When you turn the optimizer ON, you should be able to take the dynamic range slider almost entirely to the left since you'd have so much light to work with (your backlight should be the same as with HDR if possible). Then see if you see the same banding.

Yes, 4000 and 1000 too, even on a 400 nit greyscale ramp it shows up, and quite noticeably. None of the Optimiser controls help to alleviate it BUT the Sony TV has its Smooth Gradation feature. Normally I never touch it with HDR content (though for some shitty SDR Blu-rays it's a must) as Medium and High end up obliterating detail, Low is better though the effect is very mild. In this case turning it on Low in conjunction with the Optimiser helps to smooth out the added gradations. It's not a perfect fix as the ramps can still look a little chunky, but for said real world content like those shots in Exodus and BR2049 it worked pretty darned well in smoothing out the offending posterisation.

From what I recall of previous SDR2020 escapades on my previous Sony 55X9005B TV (this is using the Panny UB900, which auto-detected that my TV was SDR2020 compatible) it made banding quite a bit worse, it was one of the reasons that made me give in and buy an HDR TV in the first place. Will give it a try on the 820 though.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by DJR662

So just to simplify things a bit here, in the end, how would you recommend using the Optimizer with the ZD9?

Leave it off for 1000 nits content and for anything else use the "basic" instead of the "super high" mode? Also I take it you didn't change any of the other optimizer settings like dynamic range adjustment for example?

Basic brings back more range but can drastically reduce the brightness output of the content, more so for a 4K nit mastering than a 1K nit, bearing in mind it's aiming for a 500-nit peak output. (See my comparison brightness curves earlier in the thread)

When set up correctly the ZD9 can do a full 1000 nits of range and the accordant luminance & APL with room to spare so yes, anything that's set to a 1000-nit mastering display level (Universal, Fox, Disney, Paramount, most Lionsgate titles) then don't go near the Optimiser. For 4000-nit mastered HDR10 content it gets a little more bumpy as using the Super High mode with my calibrated TV settings can clip >3000-nits. I can compensate for this by slightly lowering contrast on the TV to recover the clipped information but then I'm also lowering luminance on a global level by 10-20% depending on the brightness value, on top of whatever the Optimiser is doing.

But the Medium player mode with the calibrated TV settings (no lowering of contrast) will have the advantage of maintaining the proper luminance up to 50% (100 nits ish) of the HDR, while rolling off the higher end more gently than the Super + lowering contrast on the TV, which I think will have brighter peaks but lower APL. I've yet to do a calibration run with the Super + lower contrast to check exactly how it affects luminance though as Ryan's 4K nit greyscale sweeps on his latest revision don't work on the Panny.

Not all 4K-nit MDL titles actually HAVE 4K nits' worth of information though, but in least in those cases the Optimiser will map to the MaxCLL which is usually provided on Sony and Warners UHDs which are invariably done to a 4K-nit MDL with some minor exceptions: Warners recently did the Matrices and 2001 with 1K-nit MDL while some of Sony's earlier titles have 10K-nit (!) MaxCLL e.g. Kwai, CE3K, Fifth Elephant.

[danny24]

Originally Posted by elwaylite

If you have it paused waiting on something, just walk by and hit the status or playback info button every now and then to keep it alive.

Maybe adding a USB stick to the back of unit for persistent storage would help. So even if the player shuts off it will remember where it was on power up.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by danny24

Maybe adding a USB stick to the back of unit for persistent storage would help. So even if the player shuts off it will remember where it was on power up.

Pretty sure these already have some form of persistent memory as I've been able to use the Java disc resume on several titles when doing all my comparison shite, even when removing them outright from the player, and it can also resume on non-Java discs as long as you turn it off with the disc inside when it's on the Ultra HD Blu-ray splash screen, if you press stop again to go back to the main player menu then it loses the resume point.

Some discs literally won't resume at all no matter what you do because they have Java which overrides the player's own resume function but they don't have a resume applet programmed onto the disc either. Paramount UHDs are a total PITA for this.

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Boy, I bet y'all are SO glad I bought one of these.

Well, I am. It's been interesting to follow and learn.

I'm surprised you haven't said anything about 480i playback yet, though! That's one thing I'd really like to know about.

[MEB]

Originally Posted by DJR662

Yeah, I had mention this before about the 820 (and the previous 900) automatically shutting down after a certain period of inactivity.

I don't understand why there is still no option to turn it off. You would think consumers are perfectly able to make up their own mind whether they would find this useful or not.

My older UB900 has shutdown while on extended pause but only on rare occasions with certain discs. And even when it DOES go into shutdown, once I press the play button it goes right back to where it was at. It doesn't force the disc to be loaded over again (as if putting the disc in for the first time).

The UB9000 doesn't remember where it was at after it's gone into shutdown. Pain in the butt!

Mark

[MEB]

Originally Posted by danny24

This was in the user manual page 37, troubleshoot section.

"This unit is turned off automatically.
To save on electricity, this unit is turned off
automatically depending on the media if there
is no button operation for about 20 minutes
when not playing back (such as when paused
or displaying the menu, displaying still
pictures, etc.)."

It does not offer a way to keep this from happening.

Thank you for that. I looked through the manual and didn't find it. At least knowing it is definitely 20 minutes before shutdown might help me to manage the situation.

Mark

[MEB]

Originally Posted by elwaylite

If you have it paused waiting on something, just walk by and hit the status or playback info button every now and then to keep it alive.

That's not a bad idea, I'll give it a try (from the remote). Thanks!

It has to be from the remote because the player is in another room.

Mark

[danny24]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Pretty sure these already have some form of persistent memory as I've been able to use the Java disc resume on several titles when doing all my comparison shite, even when removing them outright from the player, and it can also resume on non-Java discs as long as you turn it off with the disc inside when it's on the Ultra HD Blu-ray splash screen, if you press stop again to go back to the main player menu then it loses the resume point.

Some discs literally won't resume at all no matter what you do because they have Java which overrides the player's own resume function but they don't have a resume applet programmed onto the disc either. Paramount UHDs are a total PITA for this.

My Oppo 203 pretty much remembers where I am at on any disc in the player almost all the time. I don't even have a USB stick plugged in for persistent storage.

[that1guystudios]

Any updates on the remote control sale price from Value Electronics or the Alexa support for the 820?