Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I own the 2016 LG UH8500 LCD, not an OLED. But it sounds like I should go with "Basic Luminance" since my set supposedly maxes around 500-550 nits, according to rtings. I question some of rtings' numbers as I have seen them post some inaccurate info in the past, so they are not foolproof. But I do think my set is probably somewhere in that vicinity. It did not include the HDR premium certification.

My advice is to see which setting best fits your TV. Even with a low peak brightness, the TV could still do a better job tone mapping than 500 nits. Like my C9 is an OLED. Rtings says it tops out between 700 and 800 nits for peak luminance, which one would think I should set it on the OLED setting. But I have found it to tone map really well. So much so, that I have it on Super High Luminance allowing the TV to tone map up to 1,500 nits and then the player takes care of the rest.

[Geoff D]

I use different Optimiser settings anyway depending on what mood I'm in, I might wanna watch one movie in 500 nits and another in 1000 (when dealing with Light Cannonry like what what Sony routinely offer up).

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

My advice is to see which setting best fits your TV. Even with a low peak brightness, the TV could still do a better job tone mapping than 500 nits. Like my C9 is an OLED. Rtings says it tops out between 700 and 800 nits for peak luminance, which one would think I should set it on the OLED setting. But I have found it to tone map really well. So much so, that I have it on Super High Luminance allowing the TV to tone map up to 1,500 nits and then the player takes care of the rest.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I use different Optimiser settings anyway depending on what mood I'm in, I might wanna watch one movie in 500 nits and another in 1000 (when dealing with Light Cannonry like what what Sony routinely offer up).

I'm guessing there's no way to know in advance though without watching each disc the first time? Ideally I'd like to find a good setting that I can leave it at without worrying I'm causing more harm than good to any particular title. I'd prefer not to have a problematic "first showing" if I put on a disc for the first time for friends. I'm guessing since my TV has pretty low nits, it would be safe to just leave it at "Basic Luminance". Are there other tweaks to the optimizer as well? I'm wondering if for some titles it might be better left off though? I guess I might have to experiment but I guess for me it will be a choice between "Basic Luminance" and off since my TV doesn't come close to 1000 so it probably makes no sense to set it to 1000.

[Geoff D]

If a disc carries MaxCLL (Maximum Content Light Level) metadata then that'll be a decent (though not exact) indicator of how bright it'll go. You can check this using the player's info screen but not all discs will have it. Most UHD discs from Universal, Warners and Sony, sometimes Lionsgate, have MaxCLL. But most stuff from Paramount, Fox and Disnee does not, they're just given a generic 1000-nit mastering display level which doesn't tell you what brightness the content has, just what display the content was mastered on.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I'm guessing there's no way to know in advance though without watching each disc the first time? Ideally I'd like to find a good setting that I can leave it at without worrying I'm causing more harm than good to any particular title. I'd prefer not to have a problematic "first showing" if I put on a disc for the first time for friends. I'm guessing since my TV has pretty low nits, it would be safe to just leave it at "Basic Luminance". Are there other tweaks to the optimizer as well? I'm wondering if for some titles it might be better left off though? I guess I might have to experiment but I guess for me it will be a choice between "Basic Luminance" and off since my TV doesn't come close to 1000 so it probably makes no sense to set it to 1000.

Experimenting is the best way to know. If I were to give a guess, your setting would either be on Basic Luminance or Medium/High Luminance but experiment with it before you choose. Like Geoff said, find a disc with MaxCLL. My settings are actually "set and forget" but it's different for every person.

[mar3o]

So what settings should I be using for color mode, deep color, color gamut, etc.?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by mar3o

So what settings should I be using for color mode, deep color, color gamut, etc.?

Auto/default except for the target stuff that Josh explained.

[Kaonashi]

I’ve been messing around with the optimiser on OLED a bit this evening with mixed results. Tried out Gobshite and OoTP to find it added a bit more colour to the specular highlights while pulling them down a little. ‘White’ fudge in the quidditch World Cup had significantly more detail and colour. The ghosts at the end didn’t show that much more detail, but they were less washed-out and greener, same for the core of the spells, though pulling them down to a duller orange didn’t give as much punch. The optimiser didn’t do much for Order, the fireworks and spells towards the end were more colourful and a little flatter, but toggling the optimiser in dark scenes did cause some crushed shadows when ‘on’.

No change for some lower-nit titles, even Arrival where I had assumed before that my TV was clipping the one bright scene.

I tried out a Sony Light Cannon to some unexpected results. It was Spider-man (2002) and every time the optimiser was on the whole picture was brighter, I thought I could see some highlights pulled down but a lot looked more blown out. Skin tones in daylight scenes were made unnaturally pink, lacking much of the texture that was there when it went straight to the TV with a Max light level of 9953 nits.

[shrex]

I can't stand the tiny, non backlit remote for the 820. I can buy a UB900 cheap replacement off of eBay that should work, correct?

[dcx4610]

Originally Posted by shrex

I can't stand the tiny, non backlit remote for the 820. I can buy a UB900 cheap replacement off of eBay that should work, correct?

Do a search for N2QAYA000131. It's not backlit but has a button to light up the buttons. It's technically the remote for the 9000 but works with the 820 and is much improved over the standard one.

[shrex]

Originally Posted by dcx4610

Do a search for N2QAYA000131. It's not backlit but has a button to light up the buttons. It's technically the remote for the 9000 but works with the 820 and is much improved over the standard one.

Any difference between the 0131 and the 0130? Found one for $11 on eBay. Looks to be the exact same thing.

[dcx4610]

Originally Posted by shrex

Any difference between the 0131 and the 0130? Found one for $11 on eBay. Looks to be the exact same thing.

Looks like just an earlier revision. I have the 31 so I can't speak for sure on it but they look identical otherwise.

[morris_schaffer]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

I'm guessing you have the C6 or E6 OLED? I have the C6 and the Panny 420 as well. My best results with HDR are definitely with the "Basic Luminance" setting on the optimizer. I came to that conclusion by comparing the ending of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with different settings, as the ghosts at the end are quite a stress-test for HDR tone-mapping.

Why would one not select OLED then if the tv is An OLED? . But hey I'm all for thinking outside of the box. Yesterday I turned on the optimizer for the UHD of Die Hard. It was the first time trying it, but saw no difference going from OFF to ON. I have the OLED E series. Or is the process twofold? So meaning, turning it ON does nothing, and one would only see changes when playing with the 4-5 sliders in that menu? Which would be strange if that were so since the sliders suggest to leave it all at the median zero value.

Edit: maybe I should test it with a super bright scene? Die hard is quite dark which might explain why I saw no difference?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by morris_schaffer

Why would one not select OLED then if the tv is An OLED? . But hey I'm all for thinking outside of the box. Yesterday I turned on the optimizer for the UHD of Die Hard. It was the first time trying it, but saw no difference going from OFF to ON. I have the OLED E series. Or is the process twofold? So meaning, turning it ON does nothing, and one would only see changes when playing with the 4-5 sliders in that menu? Which would be strange if that were so since the sliders suggest to leave it all at the median zero value.

Edit: maybe I should test it with a super bright scene? Die hard is quite dark which might explain why I saw no difference?

To test it properly, you need to select movies that have content over 1,000 nits. If you select the OLED setting, it will only tonemap anything above 1,000 nits down to that target.

[motorheadache95]

Originally Posted by morris_schaffer

Why would one not select OLED then if the tv is An OLED? . But hey I'm all for thinking outside of the box. Yesterday I turned on the optimizer for the UHD of Die Hard. It was the first time trying it, but saw no difference going from OFF to ON. I have the OLED E series. Or is the process twofold? So meaning, turning it ON does nothing, and one would only see changes when playing with the 4-5 sliders in that menu? Which would be strange if that were so since the sliders suggest to leave it all at the median zero value.

Edit: maybe I should test it with a super bright scene? Die hard is quite dark which might explain why I saw no difference?

Which year is yours? Although the Optimizer lists names for each setting, it's really just a nits-counter. The "OLED" setting tone-maps anything that hits 1,000 nits or above. My C6 peaks at about 540 nits and doesn't have the greatest tone-mapping, so "basic" works better for me. Later OLEDS are better at tone-mapping, so OLED probably works better for those, or even a higher-setting with the C9 or CX I've heard.

You won't always notice switching the optimizer on or off. The optimizer really helps with tone-mapping scenes that either look too dim or are too bright and clip highlights, and depending on how they're mastered some films will be tougher to tone-map than others. Maybe somebody knows some good "test sequences" to fiddle around with tone-mapping.

[morris_schaffer]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

Which year is yours? Although the Optimizer lists names for each setting, it's really just a nits-counter. The "OLED" setting tone-maps anything that hits 1,000 nits or above. My C6 peaks at about 540 nits and doesn't have the greatest tone-mapping, so "basic" works better for me. Later OLEDS are better at tone-mapping, so OLED probably works better for those, or even a higher-setting with the C9 or CX I've heard.

You won't always notice switching the optimizer on or off. The optimizer really helps with tone-mapping scenes that either look too dim or are too bright and clip highlights, and depending on how they're mastered some films will be tougher to tone-map than others. Maybe somebody knows some good "test sequences" to fiddle around with tone-mapping.

Thanks really appreciate the feedback. It's a TV from 2016 (see signature for model). Which I guess means selecting 'OLED' might not be the best choice if I understand it correctly.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by shrex

Any difference between the 0131 and the 0130? Found one for $11 on eBay. Looks to be the exact same thing.

Originally Posted by dcx4610

Looks like just an earlier revision. I have the 31 so I can't speak for sure on it but they look identical otherwise.

Off the top of my head of the N2QAYA000130 is a Canadian version that has the TV control buttons but they're not programable to other models. I think the 30 has 10 and 30 second transport buttons as well.

[shrex]

Originally Posted by chip75

Off the top of my head of the N2QAYA000130 is a Canadian version that has the TV control buttons but they're not programable to other models. I think the 30 has 10 and 30 second transport buttons as well.

Thanks!

I couldn't stand the Netflix button on the 820, its in such an odd spot, always ended up hitting it when messing with the arrow buttons. I wound up grabbing the N2QAYA000131 for a super cheap price off of eBay.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

To test it properly, you need to select movies that have content over 1,000 nits. If you select the OLED setting, it will only tonemap anything above 1,000 nits down to that target.

...and as Die Hard only has 1000-nit mastering display metadata on the disc then the Optimiser literally does nothing to the image when set to anything higher than Basic luminance. This will be true for virtually every disc produced by Universal, Paramount, Disnee and Fox as they master out to 1000 nits 99% of the time, so with the Optimiser set to OLED, Medium/High or Super High then it will do nada on those discs.

[NIN7474]

Originally Posted by shrex

Thanks!

I couldn't stand the Netflix button on the 820, its in such an odd spot, always ended up hitting it when messing with the arrow buttons. I wound up grabbing the N2QAYA000131 for a super cheap price off of eBay.

I just bought the N2QAYA000131 also on ebay with a "make a offer" for $1 less and free shipping. Plan on using with my UB820. Thank you everyone for the recommendation