Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by RalphoR

If the noise issue is a concern I would find it difficult to upgrade the 820 to the 9000 for $500...especially if you didn't need all the other tech in the first place.

I'm having a difficult time believing the picture quality between the 9000, LX500, and the CXUHD is discernible. They're all top flight players so I'd think the video comparison would be 99% similar. Anyone with experience with all three? Is there a noticeable difference? If you have a high end TV is the difference even less?

I only did the test with 205/9000/500. The 9000 is noticeably better than the 205. Slightly but still noticeably better than 500. Once the HDR optimizer is on AND customized, it is head and shoulder better than everything and only slightly better than the 820.

[Robert Zohn]

I'll be testing them side-by-side with our TV Shootout professional 18Gbps matrix distribution switch to see how the UB9000 and LX-500 perform with our A9F, E8, Z9F and Q9FN on our TV Shootout wall and the rest of the TVs in our showroom.

We'll also test the players with direct HDMI input to the TVs so we can use the HDR Tone Mapping features on the UB9000 and LX500 tuned to each TV. So for the A9F we'll use HDMI 1 for the LX500 and HDMI 2 for the UB9000 and so on for each TV we have on the TV Shootout wall. So we can drill down the finest details of each players performance.

I'll also test the audio performance on both players.

Stand by for the results of our findings.

[Robert Zohn]

Originally Posted by that1guystudios

This player was advertised that it would support Alexa, but the skill is still unavailable. Any updates from Panasonic on this?

The UB820 and UB9000 are Alexa and Google Assistant ready.

To get the AI voice control working someone needs to get the "Skills" built. I signed up as a developer and am trying to get the time to build the Skills myself, but may just give in to hiring a professional programmer with skills to build Alexa Skills. Get it skills for skills. JK on that part, but the rest is all true and many things said in jest are true.

FYI, and on another subject, I am beginning to prefer Google Assistant as it uses Google's search engine and Alexa uses Bing. I also like the way Google replies to follow-up questions.

[RalphoR]

That would be awesome, Robert. For the few of us on the fence this will give us all the information we require to make the best purchase based on our specific hardware. Thanks for doing this

[sapiendut]

Re Alexa and Google, for Control4 it is better and a lot cheaper to use Alexa. Google Assistant is bery expensive to just buy the driver. I’m talking in general, not Panasonic

[tbessie]

Originally Posted by XciteMe

Hello, can somebody tell me the main difference between the UB9000 and the UB820? Is it simply the better-quality DAC used in the 9000 and the dual power supplies? Are there any discernible Picture Quality improvements the UB9000 can offer over its cheaper cousin? What does the THX certification truly mean?

Basically I'm trying to decide if the 9000 is worth it over the 820 if I only care about PQ. I'll have a high-end receiver to transmit and decode sound for my home theater so I don't really care for the audio bells & whistles of the Blu Ray Player.

Thanks.

Why did you post this twice?

[tbessie]

Originally Posted by XciteMe

Can anybody tell me if the 9000 offers any improvements in Picture Quality over the 820??? Or are the differences only in the audio portion???

Now you've asked 3 times.

I believe these questions have been asked and answered in this thread (and also in this thread on AVS Forums). Did you not read the whole thread? Do that before asking, that's always a better way of going about this.

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/149-b...thread-15.html

[Apari]

I don't understand how people can complain about 820 being noisy (unless there's something wrong on their unit) because I have the player about 2,5m away from me and only times I can hear the player is when it turns on and when I open/close the disc tray. Absoluty no other sounds that I can hear. Ofcourse I haven't gone close to the player and muted my system to check if it's dead silent or if it does make some sound that I can't hear to the sofa. If it's that loud to some of you that you can hear it when watching a movie, there might be something wrong with your unit...

[AKORIS]

Originally Posted by Apari

I don't understand how people can complain about 820 being noisy (unless there's something wrong on their unit) because I have the player about 2,5m away from me and only times I can hear the player is when it turns on and when I open/close the disc tray. Absoluty no other sounds that I can hear. Ofcourse I haven't gone close to the player and muted my system to check if it's dead silent or if it does make some sound that I can't hear to the sofa. If it's that loud to some of you that you can hear it when watching a movie, there might be something wrong with your unit...

I had this unit briefly and heard zero noise when testing discs for about 3 days... one after another.

Seems strange to hear these extreme examples of noise... especially when almost all of us have receivers or soundbars hooked up to our systems. Seems like even if the player did make noise, you wouldn't hear it much.

[GiuseppeM]

Originally Posted by fusion_400

Hello Giuseppe great to hear that you have both the UB820 and the UB9000.

Is there a massive difference when it comes to disc spinning noise between the UB820 and UB9000 when the first 15 minutes of a 4k uhd bluray movie plays? The 4K disc needs to rotate much faster then a regular blu-ray. So the issue is not regular blu-ray but only 4k uhd bluray movies.

I was very annoyed by the UB820 disc spinning sound when i played the The Passengers 4k uhd disc. So now i am upgrading to the UB9000 because of this issue. But i am getting conflicting reports some say the UB9000 is quiet while a german review says there is an issue with noise.

Hi I didn't notice a difference, but I must be frank, I didn't care much about it. A difference I noticed was instead the speed in starting the vision and generally to all commands.

[CBCstillmatic]

Originally Posted by AKORIS

I had this unit briefly and heard zero noise when testing discs for about 3 days... one after another.

Seems strange to hear these extreme examples of noise... especially when almost all of us have receivers or soundbars hooked up to our systems. Seems like even if the player did make noise, you wouldn't hear it much.

It could simply be a manufacturing variation. The one I had was certainly very noisy at times, reminded me of my PS4 Pro but not as loud. It was at its most noisy when any disc first spun up but there were times even during the movie I could easily hear it over whatever I was watching at around -30 volume. Obviously -20 and up would drown out anything but down at normal listening volumes it could be heard. My X700’s never gets that loud, not even on first spin up of a disc. I may have had a bad unit in that regard and it was part of what made me regret spending $500 on it, but there were other reasons I chose not to keep it otherwise, after reading this thread, I would have just tried swapping it to see if I could get a quieter one.

Don’t mean to impose here as I no longer own this player but figured I’d give my experience as I think it’s certainly possible for others to potentially end up with noisy players too.

[fusion_400]

Originally Posted by GiuseppeM

Hi I didn't notice a difference, but I must be frank, I didn't care much about it. A difference I noticed was instead the speed in starting the vision and generally to all commands.

Ok i thought there was a big difference between the UB820 and UB9000 disc rotation noise when playing 4k UHD Bluray. This is the main reason i am buying a UB9000 because of it's low disc rotation noise. But if there is no big difference i guess i need to cancel my order directly.

[fusion_400]

Originally Posted by CBCstillmatic

It could simply be a manufacturing variation. The one I had was certainly very noisy at times, reminded me of my PS4 Pro but not as loud. It was at its most noisy when any disc first spun up but there were times even during the movie I could easily hear it over whatever I was watching at around -30 volume. Obviously -20 and up would drown out anything but down at normal listening volumes it could be heard. My X700’s never gets that loud, not even on first spin up of a disc. I may have had a bad unit in that regard and it was part of what made me regret spending $500 on it, but there were other reasons I chose not to keep it otherwise, after reading this thread, I would have just tried swapping it to see if I could get a quieter one.

Don’t mean to impose here as I no longer own this player but figured I’d give my experience as I think it’s certainly possible for others to potentially end up with noisy players too.

Thanks this is exactly what i experienced with UB820 in regards to disc rotation noise. Glad to hear i am not alone in having a bad experience with the UB820.

[King Crimson]

Originally Posted by fusion_400

Thanks this is exactly what i experienced with UB820 in regards to disc rotation noise. Glad to hear i am not alone in having a bad experience with the UB820.

Yeah that is unfortunate, if you do end up exchanging for another one you should see the difference quickly.

[fusion_400]

Originally Posted by King Crimson

Yeah that is unfortunate, if you do end up exchanging for another one you should see the difference quickly.

I will go for an UB9000 and hope it will be alot better then the UB820 in regards to disc rotation noise. I managed to get a better price after complaining about the UB820 to the store. So now i get it for 166 US Dollars cheaper.

[RalphoR]

There's a silver lining for you. If you have to pay a lot more for the 9000 your bad experience with the 820 is making it much more palatable.

[fusion_400]

It's amazing i managed to buy a UHD disc Passengers as my first UHD 4k Bluray disc purchase that seems to be one noisy disc i am not alone with this issue others also complain but have a different player. Hopefully the UB9000 will be able to supress the noise issues of this disc that the UB820 was not able to handle.

Look at this:
"When playing Passengers UHD, excessive noise/vibration occurs consistently at startup that lessens gradually until 30 min in. I set the AVR audio to 40 to drown it out. 30 min from the end the noise increases gradually until the credits end. The 3D version is quiet, Planet Earth II UHD and Lucy UHD are noise/vibration free. Other std blu-rays are good. Is this a possible UP970 problem, possible defective UHD, or a common Sony UHD authoring attribute? "

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/149-b...ce-talk-7.html

So the UB9000 is also quicker in operation then UB820. Anyone else who have noticed this ?

[IntelliVolume]

What's weird is that, amidst all this talk of the Panasonics exhibiting these noise issues, when I went to play the "Family Fun Edition" of the Home Alone DVD last night, the disc made a loud noise in my CXUHD -- during loading and playback -- yet it didn't affect the film itself. The noise was definitely audible -- we could hear it over quieter parts of the film; I attempted to eject the disc and reseat it in the tray, thinking that perhaps it was off somewhat, but that didn't help. Strange that we never heard this on any other player we've played this disc on (infinite times)...perhaps an old encoding/authoring scheme not playing well with a new advanced UHD BD player?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by fusion_400

It's amazing i managed to buy a UHD disc Passengers as my first UHD 4k Bluray disc purchase that seems to be one noisy disc i am not alone with this issue others also complain but have a different player. Hopefully the UB9000 will be able to supress the noise issues of this disc that the UB820 was not able to handle.

Look at this:
"When playing Passengers UHD, excessive noise/vibration occurs consistently at startup that lessens gradually until 30 min in. I set the AVR audio to 40 to drown it out. 30 min from the end the noise increases gradually until the credits end. The 3D version is quiet, Planet Earth II UHD and Lucy UHD are noise/vibration free. Other std blu-rays are good. Is this a possible UP970 problem, possible defective UHD, or a common Sony UHD authoring attribute? "

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/149-b...ce-talk-7.html

So the UB9000 is also quicker in operation then UB820. Anyone else who have noticed this ?

Note that Passengers is another Sony UHD like the loud-ass Crouching Tiger, I think certain discs from that period were authored in such a way as to make the Pannys sound like they're chewing on them. Not deliberately of course.

[Mobe1969]

Sometimes I think discs are off balance with excessive artwork. Irecall once having a disc with vibration issues and balancing it with pieces of tape like balancing a car wheel. It was in the DVD era. Any rate, a heavier mechanism will absorb vibration better.

I was surprised how silent my 9000 disc noise was. I got down during playback and couldn't really hear it.