Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Animatic33]

Interesting how a few of us are having this no read/ trouble loading UHD issue, my 820 is in the shop to see what might be the issue. My model was manufactured in 2018, and has the latest firmware (1.69). Part of me is leaning towards the firmware being a suspect, maybe in some setups it causes issues? My first run-in was with the Ebola Syndrome UHD from VS, then it was fine, and then my Skyfall UHD threw the whole works into chaos.

One thing I did not try before sending it to the shop for repairs, was to disable Dolby Vision support and see if it was trying to load DV on non DV discs.

[lemongrass]

I had a problem with some foreign font files, and at least in my case, it turned out I just needed to convert them to UTF-8, there's a free online converter that works well.. https://subtitletools.com/convert-te...to-utf8-online

Originally Posted by medikoo

I have RF firmware and external subs worked. Still note that given option is displayed in a menu only if USB stick with properly named subtitles files is injected.

Nonetheless I found this feature useless as font that's used for subs doesn't support many characters, e.g. in Polish we have some diactric letters, and out of ca7 only 2 are displayed well, rest are presented as squares.
Maybe for German specific chars there's better support.

AFAIK this feature was made specifically for Chinese market, so main focus is on Chinese chars there

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Animatic33

Interesting how a few of us are having this no read/ trouble loading UHD issue, my 820 is in the shop to see what might be the issue. My model was manufactured in 2018, and has the latest firmware (1.69).

How do you know when it was manufactured? My European 820EGK was assembled in the Czech Republic, that is all I can see from the back panel info. Bought in April 2018. No issues with loading UHDs, fw 1.69.

[sofaman]

Originally Posted by Animatic33

Interesting how a few of us are having this no read/ trouble loading UHD issue, my 820 is in the shop to see what might be the issue. My model was manufactured in 2018, and has the latest firmware (1.69). Part of me is leaning towards the firmware being a suspect, maybe in some setups it causes issues? My first run-in was with the Ebola Syndrome UHD from VS, then it was fine, and then my Skyfall UHD threw the whole works into chaos.

One thing I did not try before sending it to the shop for repairs, was to disable Dolby Vision support and see if it was trying to load DV on non DV discs.

I was kinda hoping it was a firmware thing, but so few people seem to be affected by it.
Strange that yours all went wrong with Skyfall .... mine started with GoT which has known read issues apparently. Surely just playing a disc couldn't cause such long term malfunction?
I'll give that DV thing a go a little later ...

[equinoa88]

Hey everyone, I'm really leaning towards getting the UB820 based on all of the overwhelming positive reviews and word of mouth. However, I have read that this player (like all, from what I hear) has some hiccups and ticks. That said, would it be fine to stick with the manufacturers 1 year warranty or for those that currently have it, should I opt to purchase the extended warranty that will cover 2 years? It's an extra $80 so if owners think that I'll be fine with the 1 year, I'll put that $80 towards a receiver. Thanks!

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by equinoa88

Hey everyone, I'm really leaning towards getting the UB820 based on all of the overwhelming positive reviews and word of mouth. However, I have read that this player (like all, from what I hear) has some hiccups and ticks. That said, would it be fine to stick with the manufacturers 1 year warranty or for those that currently have it, should I opt to purchase the extended warranty that will cover 2 years? It's an extra $80 so if owners think that I'll be fine with the 1 year, I'll put that $80 towards a receiver. Thanks!

Personally I think if something is truly going to go wrong, it will happen within the first year.

[hansolo]

Originally Posted by chrisandy007

Also tried again on fat32, same thing. Firmware: 1.69.

And is it official directly from Panasonic site/servers or modified "feature enhanced" version? Latter is needed for external subs I think at least with 820. Also, advanced features need to be enabled by remote control button sequence. After that they are "on" for good until you choose to turn them off. Support for external srt subtitles are part of enhanced features.

[rickardl]

I don't know if this "trick" with forced subtitles has been mentioned in this thread but here it is:

If you have one the Panasonic players, like the DP-UB820, you can move the subtitles below/outside of the visible picture, set Subtitle Position to -30 and you are good to go!
(haven't checked the whole movie but -30 took care of the two-liners in the beginning)

[Riggins1]

I have been playing around with my tv settings a lot recently to try and fix the flickering issues I have been experiencing. Nothing seems to work. My 4K movies play perfectly but most of my blurays have some hints of flickering. It’s really frustrating. Tried to watch the UK Blu-ray of Once upon a time in the west tonight but turned it off cause I was so annoyed by the flickering. Maybe I’m at that point where I actively look for it but I’m starting to think it has to be the player. So weird though.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Riggins1

I have been playing around with my tv settings a lot recently to try and fix the flickering issues I have been experiencing. Nothing seems to work. My 4K movies play perfectly but most of my blurays have some hints of flickering. It’s really frustrating. Tried to watch the UK Blu-ray of Once upon a time in the west tonight but turned it off cause I was so annoyed by the flickering. Maybe I’m at that point where I actively look for it but I’m starting to think it has to be the player. So weird though.

Can you refresh our memories and remind us what TV you have?

Is this flickering on ALL blu-rays you watch? And only in low light scenes?

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

DVD playback sucks on these Panasonics.

As I mentioned earlier, I have played DVDs on this machine and they look fine to me. I always set the player to output 480p when playing DVDs.

[Waboman]

DVDs? What are those?

[Riggins1]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Can you refresh our memories and remind us what TV you have?

Is this flickering on ALL blu-rays you watch? And only in low light scenes?

I have an LG OLED CX. It’s mostly noticeable in dark scenes but on the Once upon a time in the West BD it was apparent even in lighter scenes.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Waboman

DVDs? What are those?

An absolute necessity for anime fans such as myself. Then there's also countless music related releases that will never see the light of day on on a format beyond DVD. Oh, and I have the Japanese DVD of this movie called Kill Bill Volume 1.

[Riggins1]

I should clarify that the flickering I am experiencing does not appear during the menus. Just during the actual films.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Riggins1

I have an LG OLED CX. It’s mostly noticeable in dark scenes but on the Once upon a time in the West BD it was apparent even in lighter scenes.

I figured, as that can be a common problem with OLED. I see it a lot on my A9G as well, and it's frustrating. It's chroma overshoot for the low light black and near black. You can improve it with calibration but it's an inherent issue.

One way to mitigate the issue is to use a little bit of ambiant lighting in the room (not pitch black), sometimes I also reduce black level one click down. OLEDs simply struggle with the white subpixel that needs to be "on" for the image to work. At these near black levels, sometimes they're not charged enough to be fully on or they're straddling that on-off state. Additionally, since each pixel is separate, it's easy to see how millions of pixels would not exactly be on and off at the same time.

[JackTwist]

Originally Posted by pbz06

I figured, as that can be a common problem with OLED. I see it a lot on my A9G as well, and it's frustrating. It's chroma overshoot for the low light black and near black. You can improve it with calibration but it's an inherent issue.

One way to mitigate the issue is to use a little bit of ambiant lighting in the room (not pitch black), sometimes I also reduce black level one click down. OLEDs simply struggle with the white subpixel that needs to be "on" for the image to work. At these near black levels, sometimes they're not charged enough to be fully on or they're straddling that on-off state. Additionally, since each pixel is separate, it's easy to see how millions of pixels would not exactly be on and off at the same time.

I also agree with this recommendation. I would turn the Black Level setting to 49 from the default 50 setting. This one click down helps reduce the flickering issue without significant or noticeable crush. (I think this is the setting name if I recall from when I had the CX previously)

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Tok

Sounds like something in the pickup but weird only if happens with dual layered 4K. Those discs are essentially BD50s. Do you have problems with those?

Originally Posted by Geoff D

They're really not BD50s. Much higher data rate on a UHD66.

BD-66 and BD-100 use the same width pits as BD-25 and BD-50 but the pits are only 3/4 the length on BD-66 and BD-100 discs so there is 1/3 more data in a single revolution. I explain this here and here.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

BD-66 and BD-100 use the same width pits as BD-25 and BD-50 but the pits are only 3/4 the length on BD-66 and BD-100 discs so there is 1/3 more data in a single revolution. I explain this here and here.

Which would make sense that when matey's laser pickup stopped reading double layer UHDs it would continue to read double layer BDs just fine, as the two technologies are kissing cousins but aren't "essentially" the same.

[Riggins1]

Originally Posted by pbz06

I figured, as that can be a common problem with OLED. I see it a lot on my A9G as well, and it's frustrating. It's chroma overshoot for the low light black and near black. You can improve it with calibration but it's an inherent issue.

One way to mitigate the issue is to use a little bit of ambiant lighting in the room (not pitch black), sometimes I also reduce black level one click down. OLEDs simply struggle with the white subpixel that needs to be "on" for the image to work. At these near black levels, sometimes they're not charged enough to be fully on or they're straddling that on-off state. Additionally, since each pixel is separate, it's easy to see how millions of pixels would not exactly be on and off at the same time.

Ok I see. Thanks so much for the advice. The flickering is not as frequent on streaming though, any ideas why that is?

Originally Posted by JackTwist

I also agree with this recommendation. I would turn the Black Level setting to 49 from the default 50 setting. This one click down helps reduce the flickering issue without significant or noticeable crush. (I think this is the setting name if I recall from when I had the CX previously)

Thank you! Will try that tonight. Much appreciated.