Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Geoff D]

That 2.0 mix has a centre and a mono surround 'matrixed' into it, yes. Most movies mixed in 'Dolby Stereo' have this configuration despite what the packaging might say.

[Paul.R.S]

. . . which means you can set your AVR to 2 ch Stereo and just be getting sound from main L and R or set it to "Dobly" and get C and mono surrounds.

[Woodsy]

Originally Posted by waxHead

I purchased Indicator’s Dragonwyck LE a while back and had a rude surprise when I tried to play it in an Xbox One X. Now that my 820 is hooked up, I just tried that disc with the top menu trick and confirmed it works! I started watching it and almost couldn’t bring myself to turn it off and write this post

Grain of salt here... that’s just one of their releases so it’s not a certainty all of them will work, but it’s good news nonetheless.

Appreciate the update. I received my UB820 in the mail yesterday and just tested as well...more good news to report! I tried 'Visa to Canton' and 'The Scarlet Blade' from the Hammer Vol 5 set, also 'I, Monster' and ALL were successful with the Top Menu trick!

[waxHead]

Originally Posted by Woodsy

Appreciate the update. I received my UB820 in the mail yesterday and just tested as well...more good news to report! I tried 'Visa to Canton' and 'The Scarlet Blade' from the Hammer Vol 5 set, also 'I, Monster' and ALL were successful with the Top Menu trick!

You're welcome! And thank you for confirming I, Monster works with the top menu trick, I had added it to my wants list after Dragonwyck worked.

[thebigcheese3k]

Originally Posted by Woodsy

Appreciate the update. I received my UB820 in the mail yesterday and just tested as well...more good news to report! I tried 'Visa to Canton' and 'The Scarlet Blade' from the Hammer Vol 5 set, also 'I, Monster' and ALL were successful with the Top Menu trick!

Awesome news, thanks for sharing! Just preordered their edition of Light Sleeper

[gates70]

With nothing announced at CES 2020 as far as UHD players go, I decided to purchase a 9000 to go alongside my OPPO 203, just in case. I already have a 820 which I relegated to the TV room, so I should be set for the future in case the market for players dwindles as a whole lol

[EddieLarkin]

Originally Posted by Paul.R.S

. . . which means you can set your AVR to 2 ch Stereo and just be getting sound from main L and R or set it to "Dobly" and get C and mono surrounds.

Yes, but only the latter is how it was intended to be heard and how it was heard in cinemas on original release.

[Paul.R.S]

Originally Posted by EddieLarkin

Yes, but only the latter is how it was intended to be heard and how it was heard in cinemas on original release.

I'm aware of that. My post is in reply to the guy who had a 2-speaker quandary. It didn't seem like dcx4610 understood that just because the audio is 2.0 doesn't mean you "shouldn't" be hearing info from surrounds.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by gates70

With nothing announced at CES 2020 as far as UHD players go, I decided to purchase a 9000 to go alongside my OPPO 203, just in case. I already have a 820 which I relegated to the TV room, so I should be set for the future in case the market for players dwindles as a whole lol

If I could get a 9000 for, say, £500 I think I'd buy one too, 'just in case' like.

[Waboman]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

If I could get a 9000 for, say, £500 I think I'd buy one too, 'just in case' like.

This Japanese company “P” needs to issue a firmware update and address the issues this player has. I’d say try the other Japanese company “P” but they’re dead, Jim.

[Geoff D]

I would like the Japanese company "P" to release a firmware update also.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by Paul.R.S

James:

Once you get things set up, I think it would be interesting to note your preferred settings without FM on and then turn it on and see what changes. My 2019 Sammy QLED has a "Movie Mode" but not FM. I think FM was a 2020 rollout--I recall us getting the vid on social with TC and McQ advertising the Mode earlier this year.

So I found one part of the problem.

"Filmmaker Mode" on my Samsung TV does not entirely turn off motion smoothing. I went on a deep dive into the image settings tonight and found that it still left "Judder Reduction" at 3, I had to manually turn it down to 0.

"Filmmaker Mode" also left a bunch of image settings at truly hideous levels, I went in and adjusted them all.

I put Brightness to the max, 50, and it looks normal now, dark areas were pitch black before.

I also put Contrast to the max, 50, and again it looked normal, not in any way blown out, but it brought more detail to dark areas.

I put sharpness to 0, because it creates hideous digital noise.

I left Color and Tint normal.

I had to fix White Balance, because it defaulted to Warm 2, which gave everything a sepia glow. I reset it to Normal.

I don't have a clue what Gamma BT.1886 is, but I set it to the max, 3, and it looked most normal.

I turned Shadow Detail up to the max, 5, and it brought out a lot of detail in the crushed dark areas.

That said, I'm still not a fan of how the image looks with 24p set to Auto on the HDMI output on the UHD player, I feel it still looks like motion smoothing. However, turning it to "Off," which induces a bit of extra judder, as a poster above pointed out, produces an image that is less fluid and far more film-like to me.

Obviously I'm new to UHD, but I truly don't believe I'm seeing phantom motion smoothing due to having a standard HD system for so long.

I'm at least glad to see that my BDs look normal on the system, since my collection is 99% BDs, and since UHD looks like it will have a tragically short life, I don't expect I'll be able to upgrade many of them beyond the biggest blockbusters.

[Geoff D]

lol @ "fixing the white balance", when the content is actually mastered that way. Sorry James but I read that and immediately thought of this:

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Filmmaker Mode won't be doing anything out of the ordinary, it'll just set the TV to 100-nit output for SDR, Warm colour temp and turn off all picture enhancing modes like those that enhance sharpness, colour, motion etc. (The 'Netflix calibrated mode' seen on TVs already does the same thing.) The ironical thing, given the hype, is that several people will take one look at FM mode and run a mile from its dim, yellow image lacking any kind of 'pop'.

You're basically doing everything the filmmakers DON'T want you to do with the brightness, contrast, gamma, colour temperature, shadow detail etc. There may be a few outliers with sharpness and motion smoothing and whatnot that do need changing, but what looks "normal" to you is not what's intended. Of coursh it's your prerogative to do whatever you want with your own TV but...wow.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

So I found one part of the problem.

"Filmmaker Mode" on my Samsung TV does not entirely turn off motion smoothing. I went on a deep dive into the image settings tonight and found that it still left "Judder Reduction" at 3, I had to manually turn it down to 0.

"Filmmaker Mode" also left a bunch of image settings at truly hideous levels, I went in and adjusted them all.

I put Brightness to the max, 50, and it looks normal now, dark areas were pitch black before.

I also put Contrast to the max, 50, and again it looked normal, not in any way blown out, but it brought more detail to dark areas.

I put sharpness to 0, because it creates hideous digital noise.

I left Color and Tint normal.

I had to fix White Balance, because it defaulted to Warm 2, which gave everything a sepia glow. I reset it to Normal.

I don't have a clue what Gamma BT.1886 is, but I set it to the max, 3, and it looked most normal.

I turned Shadow Detail up to the max, 5, and it brought out a lot of detail in the crushed dark areas.

That said, I'm still not a fan of how the image looks with 24p set to Auto on the HDMI output on the UHD player, I feel it still looks like motion smoothing. However, turning it to "Off," which induces a bit of extra judder, as a poster above pointed out, produces an image that is less fluid and far more film-like to me.

Obviously I'm new to UHD, but I truly don't believe I'm seeing phantom motion smoothing due to having a standard HD system for so long.

I'm at least glad to see that my BDs look normal on the system, since my collection is 99% BDs, and since UHD looks like it will have a tragically short life, I don't expect I'll be able to upgrade many of them beyond the biggest blockbusters.

Samsung and "filmmaker mode" are an oxymoron (kidding). Yes the motion settings should definitely be changed: Judder 0, and Blur Reduction 10 is the usual recommendation.

The other settings, I can only assume they were correctly defaulting in their respective SDR and HDR modes (never know if something went fishy though). You are likely used to far inacurate modes then?

Is this the new TV you just got? Which model did you upgrade from the older one we were talking about earlier?

[Paul.R.S]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Which model did you upgrade from the older one we were talking about earlier?

His old display: LN40C530; his new display: TU8000.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I put Brightness to the max, 50, and it looks normal now, dark areas were pitch black before.

If that's for SDR in a dark room, then it's way too bright and it's going to severely impact your HDR experience as you're nuking content mastered to 100 nits by maxing out the backlight. HDR will have nowhere to go as it's maxed out anyway and your brain will think it's a dim nightmare!

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Paul.R.S

His old display: LN40C530; his new display: TU8000.

Ah OK. Well the reality is that it's limited to what it can do. Looking at rtings, the peak brightness for HDR is about 270 nits, and it's an edge lit TV. There will be heavy compromises with HDR and backlight/contrast on that set...it makes sense that he found it too dim.

[Kaonashi]

Considering getting this player. So my impression of the optimiser is that it should be used on a case-by-case basis? Or can it be left on and not make much of a difference to discs that don’t ‘need’ it?

Is it effectively a fixed uniform change to the tone mapping or is it more adaptive based on the info shown? Hearing about it is only making me think about the ‘active HDR’ on LG Oleds, turned on by setting Dynamic Contrast to ‘Low’ and allegedly recommended for picture accuracy. It dimmed bright images (pulling down some highlight detail) but brightened dark ones (conversely blowing out any specular highlights). I turned it off because of the ungodly flickering that would be induced when a dark object against a light background would confuse the heck out of it.

[Synchg]

leave james alone u guyz, he set temp from warm2 to normal, so now it looks the way it should. so its all good

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Kaonashi

Considering getting this player. So my impression of the optimiser is that it should be used on a case-by-case basis? Or can it be left on and not make much of a difference to discs that don’t ‘need’ it?

Is it effectively a fixed uniform change to the tone mapping or is it more adaptive based on the info shown? Hearing about it is only making me think about the ‘active HDR’ on LG Oleds, turned on by setting Dynamic Contrast to ‘Low’ and allegedly recommended for picture accuracy. It dimmed bright images (pulling down some highlight detail) but brightened dark ones (conversely blowing out any specular highlights). I turned it off because of the ungodly flickering that would be induced when a dark object against a light background would confuse the heck out of it.

The HDR Optimizer is a static/fixed tonemapper. It reads the data on the disk (max brightness, average brightness etc.) and tonemaps it down to the target for the display you have. Panasonic is suggesting they tonemap faithfully and can do it better than most TV's, and gives the TV a more manageable set of information. For example, a TV might see a max luminance of 4,000 nits but not realize the majority of the movie is filmed with a max of 200 nits, so it will crunch down 4,000 worth of range down to its capabilities...and that 200 nits might now be 100 nits and so on...resulting in a dim picture.

I set it on and forget it, but I also have OLED. Sony likes to maintain accuracy at the expense of clipping highlights...which is great and all, but for the movies that are mastered with high nits (up to 4,000 or whatever), it can make a difference in resolving a little more detail. In most movies though, it's no effect and not really a big deal to worry about.

But what you describe is a good example of the shortcomings of "dynamic" tonemapping.