Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Wormicide]

I realize Dolby Vision is more widespread. If a disc doesn’t have it it’s available through streaming. I’m just asking for the limited amount of discs available is this player really worth a $300 premium for it?

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by Wormicide

I realize Dolby Vision is more widespread. If a disc doesn’t have it it’s available through streaming. I’m just asking for the limited amount of discs available is this player really worth a $300 premium for it?

Yes... unless you only have a 4k HDR projector that only takes the HDR10 and HLG (the broadcast form of HDR) formats. It's crazy that at this day and age Dolby hasn't licensed DV for projectors, which is what it was designed for in the first place.



A projector would only need the lower grade Panny player.

[Troy73]

Originally Posted by Wormicide

I realize Dolby Vision is more widespread. If a disc doesn’t have it it’s available through streaming. I’m just asking for the limited amount of discs available is this player really worth a $300 premium for it?

Is this your first 4K player or are you looking to upgrade?

[Gokusa]

So if I care about Dolby vision and good image quality get the $300 4K player or get the $ 500 one (which just is for audiophiles right?)

[Troy73]

Originally Posted by Wormicide

I realize Dolby Vision is more widespread. If a disc doesn’t have it it’s available through streaming. I’m just asking for the limited amount of discs available is this player really worth a $300 premium for it?

Just a side note, Best Buy has a sale on the 420 player almost monthly at $150. Great price. On sale at that price on their website right now. Amazon has it for that price as well.

[Wormicide]

Originally Posted by Troy73

Just a side note, Best Buy has a sale on the 420 player almost monthly at $150. Great price. On sale at that price on their website right now. Amazon has it for that price as well.

That’s why I posted. The 420 for 149.99 and 820 449.99. I used to have a samsung player. My oled does DV. It’s been forever since I’ve watched a disc though. I’ll buy them and just stream.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by Wormicide

That’s why I posted. The 420 for 149.99 and 820 449.99. I used to have a samsung player. My oled does DV. It’s been forever since I’ve watched a disc though. I’ll buy them and just stream.

Streaming DV is a lesser form of the format (just metadata). At least on disc you have lossless audio and sometimes Full Enhancement Layer DV with 12 bit depth.

[Troy73]

Originally Posted by Wormicide

That’s why I posted. The 420 for 149.99 and 820 449.99. I used to have a samsung player. My oled does DV. It’s been forever since I’ve watched a disc though. I’ll buy them and just stream.

I will say this, the Panasonic players are some of the best on the market for price to performance. No matter what you decided as far as their players are concerned your getting a great product.

[tama]

Is the DV on these players still a tad brighter and clip compared to other DV capable players on the market?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by tama

Is the DV on these players still a tad brighter and clip compared to other DV capable players on the market?

Any variation in brightness and clipping/tonemapping is dictated by the TV

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Any variation in brightness and clipping/tonemapping is dictated by the TV

So how comes the Pannys don't map low latency DV the same as the OPPOs despite the TV being set to the exact same settings for each? Simple answer is that the DV LL implementation - which in Sony's case relies on the PLAYER to do the tone mapping and then send it downstream to the TV in what is essentially an HDR12 signal - is indeed implemented differently between brands.

[eddievanhalen]

Originally Posted by Troy73

It’s great that you love Dolby Vision but that’s no reason to give bad advice. The Panasonic 4K players in this line are identical in picture quality other than the top models offering DV. I have the 420 in my game room hooked up to my Samsung 4K and watching movies in HDR10+ is a revelation in PQ. I would put that up against DV as an equal in PQ any day of the week.

I prefer HDR10+ over Dolby Vision on disc. With Dolby Vision on disc there's toomuch tampering of the picture mixing two video data streams together (it's done this way to keep compatibility with HDR) and not all players get this right.
Panasonic and Sony players are known for its "burned" highlights when playing Dolby Vision, smoething this system is designed to avoid with its dinamic metadata to aid the TV on tone mapping.
In adition to that, as far as I know there are no consumer sets with 12 bit panels. I know quasi 12 bit performance can be achieved with dithering and Frame Rate Control,but it's not the same,just like an 8 bit panel using dither and Frame Rate Control playing HDR 10 bit Wide Color Gamut doesn't achieve the color accuracy of a 10 bit panel.
I'd save some money and get the Panasonic 420 and with the remaining money I'd get some movie discs.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

So how comes the Pannys don't map low latency DV the same as the OPPOs despite the TV being set to the exact same settings for each? Simple answer is that the DV LL implementation - which in Sony's case relies on the PLAYER to do the tone mapping and then send it downstream to the TV in what is essentially an HDR12 signal - is indeed implemented differently between brands.

Oh, that makes sense then...kinda still confusing to me. I always thought of it as similar to audio, whether you send bitstream and let AVR decode, or if the player decodes and sends it as PCM etc. but the end result is identical.

I was under the impression that player led or tv led still results in the same image, and any variance between different players/tv combos is because that's how the TV handles it.

[K9 Mark V]

Did that DV brightness bug ever get fixed? Or am I thinking of the wrong player?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Oh, that makes sense then...kinda still confusing to me. I always thought of it as similar to audio, whether you send bitstream and let AVR decode, or if the player decodes and sends it as PCM etc. but the end result is identical.

I was under the impression that player led or tv led still results in the same image, and any variance between different players/tv combos is because that's how the TV handles it.

You're not wrong with the audio analogy, it SHOULD be the same but there are clearly different versions of the DV Low Latency mode at the software level. And people who have full-fat DV TVs have reported inferior image quality when using LL (just to see what it's like or by accident, e.g. if the OPPO is set to Auto then it will still kick out the player-led LL mode to some TVs even though they can do the proper TV-led DV, the player needs to be set to TV-led to bypass this bug) which results in visible banding as well as other problems IIRC like momentary glitches in colour.

[Troy73]

Originally Posted by K9 Mark V

Did that DV brightness bug ever get fixed? Or am I thinking of the wrong player?

I thought that was the LG tv with Sony x700 4K player?

[Mobe1969]

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

If you are streaming any HDR content, from the Panasonic UB820 or Ub9000 the content will be tone mapped by the HDR Optimizer.

Panasonic's UB820 and UB9000 will not tone map any content that is not originated from the BD players Smart Apps menu.

Robert

Sorry to hassle you but is there any techs contacts of yours at Panasonic you can contact regards the issue the 820 and 9000 are having with two of the recent Lionsgate titles? Eg Midway and Knives out. With both the playback is stopping for an extended time if you are playing with Dolby Vision. With HDR10 they play fine. For Midway, at time about 37 min and 39 min.

There have been plenty of posts on AVS Forum on it. And when they contacted Panasonic they brushed it off like maybe their player needed repairs, not a problem with the media, although many people have it.

Thanks

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Mobe1969

Robert

Sorry to hassle you but is there any techs contacts of yours at Panasonic you can contact regards the issue the 820 and 9000 are having with two of the recent Lionsgate titles? Eg Midway and Knives out. With both the playback is stopping for an extended time if you are playing with Dolby Vision. With HDR10 they play fine. For Midway, at time about 37 min and 39 min.

There have been plenty of posts on AVS Forum on it. And when they contacted Panasonic they brushed it off like maybe their player needed repairs, not a problem with the media, although many people have it.

Thanks

My copy of Midway froze at those spots too. I haven't watched Knives Out yet, but that sucks to hear that it happens on that too.

The Midway one is a bad spot too, because it's in the middle of an intense action sequence building up to a critical moment!

[vjo81]

Ralph Potts, the respected reviewer on AVS Forum says that, on his UB-820, the were no freezes in the DV versions of either Midway or Knives Out. He's running Firmware version 1.60 like almost all of us 820 owners. This is looking like a very strange mystery.

[sapiendut]

I watched Knives Out on UB9000 in DV mode with my GZ2000 OLED with no freezing