Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by Better in Blu

DVD's look like sh*t on my UB9000. My former Oppo was phenomenal for playback of that format.

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

I only use the 820 for 4K and BD discs. I use the PS5 or Sony x800M2 for DVD playback.

If Oppo players were still being made then I'd rightfully defer to them as king of all-the-things. However, the way both my X900F and BDP-S6700 upscale DVDs/DVD rips (that I stream via Plex/Infuse) is nothing short of phenomenal.

Panny's only real advantage re: DVD playback would be in the chroma upsampling area, but even then I've never noticed a real difference in overall color depth/hue delineation when it comes to SD material.

[JohnCarpenterLives]

Originally Posted by TravisTylerBlack

If Oppo players were still being made then I'd rightfully defer to them as king of all-the-things. However, the way both my X900F and BDP-S6700 upscale DVDs/DVD rips (that I stream via Plex/Infuse) is nothing short of phenomenal.

Panny's only real advantage re: DVD playback would be in the chroma upsampling area, but even then I've never noticed a real difference in overall color depth/hue delineation when it comes to SD material.

Last DVD I watched on my 820 was Black Sunday and it looked great. If I was told it was a bluray I might believe it.

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterLives

Last DVD I watched on my 820 was Black Sunday and it looked great. If I was told it was a bluray I might believe it.

I'm glad to hear it! Mind you I don't think the 820's upscaling methods render an unwatchable DVD image, just an inferior one. Also encoding techniques and overall quality/resolution of the source master play a significant role in how well any given disc will look when up-rezzed on a large, modern display.

Depending on which Black Sunday DVD you have it might even be sourced from the same HD master as seen on the Arrow/Kino blu-ray editions, in which case it's going to look pretty good regardless of device you use for playback.

[ronboster]

Originally Posted by TravisTylerBlack

PS What happened to your signature? I thought the Xbox and PS5 were the "the best 4K players ever made" due to their "superior build and processing power"?

I guess people have the right to change their minds?

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

I have the 820 as well. I find the optimizer to be completely worthless and should be turned off.

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

I don’t think I could live without the Panasonic optimizer

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by ronboster

I guess people of the right to change their minds?

[Waboman]

Holy Vecna. We’re in the upside down. Lol

[Cortiz]

Originally Posted by ronboster

I guess people have the right to change their minds?

That's one hell of an 360 degree turn

[sapiendut]

At least he’s now on the righteous path

[Naiera]

What's the trick to getting sound out of the HDMI Audio output on the 820? I've set it up according to the manual, pulled the power, reset the all the settings, but still nothing. Still only from the video output do I get sound.

[shane01]

Quick question/verification: I have an Atmos sound bar that is not very impressive. I usually switch my UB820 output to secondary audio on Atmos discs. I noticed that some DD conversions are at 448 and some are 640. Does this mean the player is actually grabbing the ac3 in the Atmos file, and not doing an active real-time conversion? Sorry if this is a dumb question!

[deatheats]

Originally Posted by Naiera

What's the trick to getting sound out of the HDMI Audio output on the 820? I've set it up according to the manual, pulled the power, reset the all the settings, but still nothing. Still only from the video output do I get sound.

It should be as simple as going to Player Settings -> HDMI and making sure “HDMI(VIDEO) Output Mode” is set to Auto and “HDMI(AUDIO) Output Mode” is set to Audio Only. Outside of that just make sure both HDMI cables are connected to their appropriate outputs.

[Naiera]

Yeah, I've done all that. I think it's a different problem that can't be solved.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by TravisTylerBlack

At normal viewing distances a competently encoded DVD, especially one that's been sourced from a strong HD master, will look more than solid when upscaled on a native HD display. Certainly better than it would on any CRTV.

As a matter of fact many, if not the majority of DVDs produced after around the mid 2000s were created with the concept of upscaling in mind. The home video heads at the major studios knew that more and more people would be investing in higher resolution displays in the coming years and (mostly) did their best to make sure that their output wouldn't look like total poop when the moment arrived. I still remember watching my copy of the POTC Dead Man's Chest DVD on my friend's 42" plasma and thinking it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen lol

Now early, especially non-anamorphic, DVDs? Oof, I'll give you those. CRT all the way. But don't even @me re: the DVDs of E.T. or the original Star Wars trilogy- they still look darn good even when projected.

Give me a break. Standard definition is still standard definition regardless if one is using a high end upscale or a player output. Nothing will put data magically back that’s been thrown away. Reminds me of the BS Toshiba said about their Super-Up-Conversion (SUC) algorithm after they lost the format war. It helped some scenes but made other stuff look like crap. It certainly did SUC.

After watching HD content for over 15 years go back and watch on these so-called great DVDs blown up to 120 inches. Regardless how you cut it there’s no f’n way roughly 350k pixels is going to come close to the 2M of a true HD master. If it does its more or less because the HD master is garbage.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by shane01

Quick question/verification: I have an Atmos sound bar that is not very impressive. I usually switch my UB820 output to secondary audio on Atmos discs. I noticed that some DD conversions are at 448 and some are 640. Does this mean the player is actually grabbing the ac3 in the Atmos file, and not doing an active real-time conversion? Sorry if this is a dumb question!

Highly doubt there’s any transcoding going on. My understanding is the audio codecs all contain legacy cores to fall back on if connected to legacy equipment. Yes enabling secondary audio will cause the player to fall back to legacy tracks. At one point it seemed the CE makers wanted the players to decode the audio but it seems to have swung back to the AVR side now with Atmos since the speaker configuration is in the AVR. Not sure how many PCM channels HDMI 2.1 will support now.

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by Tok

Give me a break. Standard definition is still standard definition regardless if one is using a high end upscale or a player output. Nothing will put data magically back that’s been thrown away.

I never claimed otherwise. But it's an objective fact that generally speaking a DVD sourced from a restored HD master (as many classic Warner titles were in the mid-2000s) will look noticeably better when upscaled on an HD display than it would on a CRTV. Many CRTV monitors weren't even capable of displaying full the 480p image.

The same principle applies to 1080p blu-rays sourced from a 4K master. (Though hell I'd argue any blu-ray worth its salt looks better upscaled.)

[Travis]

Been playing with the 4K conversion on the 820.

Watched Dark City (1950); it looked terrible.

King Kong (2005), and it looks great. The Simpsons Movie (2007) looked pretty solid, too.

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) was fine.

Will give up-conversion a few more tries with newer movies.

[Mierzwiak]

Originally Posted by Travis

Been playing with the 4K conversion on the 820.

It's 2022, there's literally zero difference between player or TV upscaling lower resolution material to 4K

[CreasyBear]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

It's 2022, there's literally zero difference between player or TV upscaling lower resolution material to 4K

Depends on the TV. My Sony A80J smokes the Oppo or Panasonic upscaling. I leave my Oppo 103 on 1080p and let the TV do the work.

[Travis]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

It's 2022, there's literally zero difference between player or TV upscaling lower resolution material to 4K

Not everyone bought gear this year. Some of us might even have TVs or projectors from 2021.

My Epson projector and Sony player from 2018 just didn’t do it for upscaling.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

It's 2022, there's literally zero difference between player or TV upscaling lower resolution material to 4K

He’s got a faux-K pixel shift projektor, so feeding it a 4K upscaled signal isn’t necessarily going to look the same as a native 1080p input. Could look worse once whatever the upscaling is doing is processed into pixel-shift territory.