Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[PoorSignal]

Can someone try to stream Gemini Man from Amazon and sample a few scenes and tell me if the colors are strange for a "movie"
Looked like wrong tones on people's faces and colors can shift different from scene to scene and sometimes even shots, doesn't look like a movie. Not sure it's my setup or not. I am using a SDR setup but this is supposed to be just a SDR 1080p stream. Given the cheesy dialog maybe that's how this movie is produced.

I streamed other movies and quality and color may have been wrong also.. sometimes I turn it on and start an amazon movie and the movie run very slow and update in "sheets". I had to put on a disc first and go back this seems to solve the problem.

I am buying another Roku Ultra black friday they usually have it for $50.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Filmfan73

Oppo (the best in terms of versatile feature set) leaving was really quite telling in the overall scheme of things. Samsung hijacked their line by creating toys instead of players, so I don't doubt them exiting the BD market.

OPPO left to make other technology, where they could sell more units with more frequency with lower production costs, I don't think the 4K market was a huge factor. Their players were expensive to make with limited sales, but they were never really a mainstream option.

The player market isn't huge (I'd assume the PS5 will be the most popular UHD player in the next year or so), consumers have just avoided going from DVD and Blu-ray players, as studios try and push streaming .

Panasonic and Sony don't even have to make new players, they just have to keep their firmware current and update their operating systems.

[wxman2003]

Originally Posted by PoorSignal

Can someone try to stream Gemini Man from Amazon and sample a few scenes and tell me if the colors are strange for a "movie"
Looked like wrong tones on people's faces and colors can shift different from scene to scene and sometimes even shots, doesn't look like a movie. Not sure it's my setup or not. I am using a SDR setup but this is supposed to be just a SDR 1080p stream. Given the cheesy dialog maybe that's how this movie is produced.

I streamed other movies and quality and color may have been wrong also.. sometimes I turn it on and start an amazon movie and the movie run very slow and update in "sheets". I had to put on a disc first and go back this seems to solve the problem.

I am buying another Roku Ultra black friday they usually have it for $50.

FWIW, a new Ultra is coming out in less than 2 weeks that will also do DV for the 1st time.

[alebonau]

Originally Posted by Gretiem

So my open box ub9000 showed up today .. box was pretty beaten up but no tears or rips in the actual box. Just threw in a UHD to see if it worked and no issues. It is currently on 1.64 FW and says no updates available. Thought 1.66 was the latest ?

1.66 is the latest, and can be downloaded here on the japan site

pretty easy to update just do via usb

dp-ub9000 firmware

works fine on mine and i am neither in japan or china

[TAC]

does the remote trick on the ub820 work on all other region Blu's? Thanks

[kevers7290]

I've been watching the 4K Planet of the Apes reboot films on my UB820 and I'm noticing that sometimes there is what I can only describe as "posterisation" in large black areas during playback. I tried turning off both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and it made no difference. Is this a glitch of the optimiser, fault in the transfer (of the disc) or something else entirely? My display is an OLED B8 LG, with all post-processing turned off.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

I've been watching the 4K Planet of the Apes reboot films on my UB820 and I'm noticing that sometimes there is what I can only describe as "posterisation" in large black areas during playback. I tried turning off both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and it made no difference. Is this a glitch of the optimiser, fault in the transfer (of the disc) or something else entirely. My display is an OLED B8 LG, with all post-processing turned off.

The optimizer can cause visible issues (some more dramatic than others) because the processing bit depth is not great enough. Video gradation test ramps have shown this to be the case.



None of the Fox Planet of the Apes 4k discs have HDR10+ or Dolby Vision encoding, so it may be the optimizer (as it only works on HDR10 content anyway). Try disabling it.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

I've been watching the 4K Planet of the Apes reboot films on my UB820 and I'm noticing that sometimes there is what I can only describe as "posterisation" in large black areas during playback. I tried turning off both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and it made no difference. Is this a glitch of the optimiser, fault in the transfer (of the disc) or something else entirely. My display is an OLED B8 LG, with all post-processing turned off.

I didn't see any of that when I recently watched them. I've seen it on some SDR Blu-ray movies but chalked it off to lower bitrate or video quality from the source.

Is your TV calibrated? It could be a combination of black cash too.

[ksc2303]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

I've been watching the 4K Planet of the Apes reboot films on my UB820 and I'm noticing that sometimes there is what I can only describe as "posterisation" in large black areas during playback. I tried turning off both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and it made no difference. Is this a glitch of the optimiser, fault in the transfer (of the disc) or something else entirely. My display is an OLED B8 LG, with all post-processing turned off.

It's most likely the tv. I've got a B8/UB820 and think I've got the same problem. When things get to almost black it gets like pixelated in the blacks. It does it with any source but seems more prevalent with HDR. LG sent technicians to my home, they said it was because I'm not using 4k material... I used the 4k disc of Doctor Sleep to demo the issue. Have you seen this issue on other sources?

[Geoff D]

Unfortunately the 2018 LG OLEDs aren't great at handling near black content, or so it would seem.

[pbz06]

Geoff, I have a question for you.

I finally got a chance to try and test out chroma test patterns with S&M UHD disc, comparing UP9000 output at 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4. As expected, my eye couldn't tell a difference and I'm not quite sure I'm understanding the instructions very well.

Anyway, regardless, assuming it's not worth pixel peeping for me...my main question is if you think there's any benefit to just leaving it at 4:2:2. Reason I'm asking is because with SDR Blu-rays, seems like it outputs 4:2:2 12-bit vs 4:4:4 8-bit, figure it makes more sense to use the higher bit processing?

There was also a fellow on AVS who suggested that A9G only truly accepts 4:4:4 in Graphics/Game mode and with Enhanced format enabled. Not sure how true it is, but I'm unable to tell when testing.

[jurid]

Originally Posted by chip75

OPPO left to make other technology, where they could sell more units with more frequency with lower production costs, I don't think the 4K market was a huge factor. Their players were expensive to make with limited sales, but they were never really a mainstream option.

The player market isn't huge (I'd assume the PS5 will be the most popular UHD player in the next year or so), consumers have just avoided going from DVD and Blu-ray players, as studios try and push streaming .

Panasonic and Sony don't even have to make new players, they just have to keep their firmware current and update their operating systems.

OPPO is a huge phone maker. BBK , its parent company, owns OPPO and oneplus, vivo, realme brands and is probably number one phone maker in the world now (BBK, Huawei and Samsung had each about 20% world market share, with BBK still actively growing). Players, and some hifi products that OPPO made were an error term in their balance sheet. So OPPO quitting that market is a huge deal for us, but hardly anyone noticed it at BBK

[Matthew.H]

Originally Posted by alebonau

1.66 is the latest, and can be downloaded here on the japan site

pretty easy to update just do via usb

dp-ub9000 firmware

works fine on mine and i am neither in japan or china

Would installing this void the warranty on a player outside Japan/China?

If it doesn't do you have a link for the UB-820 1.66 update?

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Matthew.H

Would installing this void the warranty on a player outside Japan/China?

If it doesn't do you have a link for the UB-820 1.66 update?

I think the update is the same for 820/9000 as far as I recall.

Not sure who would accuse you of voided the warranty, but it's probably only worth considering if you need the subtitle option added.

[Sailor09]

The external subtitles options did not show up on my UB820 with Panasonic Chinese 1.66 FW.

[kevers7290]

Thanks for the advice. I will try turning off the optimiser and see if that removes the "blotchy" blacks, otherwise I will have to assume it's my OLED panel.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Geoff, I have a question for you.

I finally got a chance to try and test out chroma test patterns with S&M UHD disc, comparing UP9000 output at 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4. As expected, my eye couldn't tell a difference and I'm not quite sure I'm understanding the instructions very well.

Anyway, regardless, assuming it's not worth pixel peeping for me...my main question is if you think there's any benefit to just leaving it at 4:2:2. Reason I'm asking is because with SDR Blu-rays, seems like it outputs 4:2:2 12-bit vs 4:4:4 8-bit, figure it makes more sense to use the higher bit processing?

There was also a fellow on AVS who suggested that A9G only truly accepts 4:4:4 in Graphics/Game mode and with Enhanced format enabled. Not sure how true it is, but I'm unable to tell when testing.

TBH if you've got a good player and good TV then these settings are all a much of a muchness, i.e. they don't really change a whole lot and even if they do the differences are incremental at best. Starting with the premise that the content is encoded at 4:2:0 anyway (at 8-bit for Blu and 10-bit for UHD) then you're just looking for as clean a signal pathway as possible. Are you outputting everything at 60Hz on the Panny though? For 24p content then 12-bit 4:4:4 is what you should be getting with everything on auto. 12-bit 4:2:2 and 8-bit 4:4:4 are for 2160p60 content because HDMI 2.0 doesn't have the bandwidth to do 2160p60 @ 12-bit 4:4:4.

But your man is right, not just about the A9G but pretty much every consumer TV on the planet rolls off chroma resolution when in non-Game/PC modes. Why? I don't know exactly, maybe it's something to do with the improved lag time that these gaming modes offer because they tend to turn off or disable all extraneous processing. What I mean is that all the processing shite that TVs carry these days needs horsepower to run in real time, so to ease the load on the processor they knock the chroma resolution down by default, but as most of that stuff is off in Game mode it means the TV can run the 4:4:4 signal as intended. It's purely a theory but I reckon Panasonic have so drastically oversharpened the chroma on their UHD players to try and combat this chroma roll-off that's inherent to consumer TVs.

[kevers7290]

Update:
I am now noticing a new problem. The black bars (letterboxes) will sometime "flash" or flicker during viewing. I turned off the optimiser, but it made no difference. At this point I'm not sure if it's my player or my display. The weird thing is that it's repeatable and not random. For example, while watching War for the Planet of the Apes (4K) during the scene

[Show spoiler]where Woody Harrelson's character dies

the letterboxes "flicker" continuously.

I have turned off all "dynamic" picture settings that I am aware of on my display (LG B8 OLED). Any help is appreciated, but honestly I'm thinking I should crosspost this in the LG OLED thread. Thanks in advance.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

Thanks for the advice. I will try turning off the optimiser and see if that removes the "blotchy" blacks, otherwise I will have to assume it's my OLED panel.

Perform a factory reset and confirm latest FW, then replace your HDMI cable(s) if issues persist.

[Waboman]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

TBH if you've got a good player and good TV then these settings are all a much of a muchness, i.e. they don't really change a whole lot and even if they do the differences are incremental at best. Starting with the premise that the content is encoded at 4:2:0 anyway (at 8-bit for Blu and 10-bit for UHD) then you're just looking for as clean a signal pathway as possible. Are you outputting everything at 60Hz on the Panny though? For 24p content then 12-bit 4:4:4 is what you should be getting with everything on auto. 12-bit 4:2:2 and 8-bit 4:4:4 are for 2160p60 content because HDMI 2.0 doesn't have the bandwidth to do 2160p60 @ 12-bit 4:4:4.

But your man is right, not just about the A9G but pretty much every consumer TV on the planet rolls off chroma resolution when in non-Game/PC modes. Why? I don't know exactly, maybe it's something to do with the improved lag time that these gaming modes offer because they tend to turn off or disable all extraneous processing. What I mean is that all the processing shite that TVs carry these days needs horsepower to run in real time, so to ease the load on the processor they knock the chroma resolution down by default, but as most of that stuff is off in Game mode it means the TV can run the 4:4:4 signal as intended. It's purely a theory but I reckon Panasonic have so drastically oversharpened the chroma on their UHD players to try and combat this chroma roll-off that's inherent to consumer TVs.

Would we benefit by using the game/pc mode?