Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by jrod8

Apologies if this is a stupid noob question but do you all find yourselves adjusting your settings on the player and TVs very often? I'm finally considering upgrading from my beloved Panasonic ST50 Plasma but what I'm used to from 1080pSDR is a kind of "calibrate it and forget it" mentality - is that even a possibility with an OLED from LG or Sony and a player like this Panasonic? Or do you find yourselves constantly making adjustments from studio to studio, DV vs HDR10 vs HDR10+, etc.?

As above, I was doing a lot of adjustments when I first got my 4K HDR telly, but since I was able to actually gauge what the TV was doing with certain HDR content with test patterns (which have been a recent thing for HDR) then that settled things down. I still kept two different modes for dealing with 1000-nit content and 4000-nit content, but I've not had to use the latter in years because of two things: Dolby Vision becoming more and more prevalent which takes cares of the tone mapping, and the Panasonic HDR Optimiser which takes care of the rest. Otherwise my standard 1000-nit mode handles most content without any external intervention.

It's not quite set and forget for newcomers, not if you want to get the most out of each specific piece of content (though you could just turn the HDR Optimiser on and leave it on), but it's better than it was.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by jrod8

Apologies if this is a stupid noob question but do you all find yourselves adjusting your settings on the player and TVs very often? I'm finally considering upgrading from my beloved Panasonic ST50 Plasma but what I'm used to from 1080pSDR is a kind of "calibrate it and forget it" mentality - is that even a possibility with an OLED from LG or Sony and a player like this Panasonic? Or do you find yourselves constantly making adjustments from studio to studio, DV vs HDR10 vs HDR10+, etc.?

Just to echo what others have said already...I do change settings a lot but only because I can't help myself and like to experiment to see what different settings do in different scenes or anomolies I might notice where I want to see if it's a disc issue or TV or player issue etc.

I'm constantly toggling between HDR Optimiser On vs Off and even between forcing DV Off etc.

Technically it's close to a set it and forget it player for most people....if you want it to

[X-rayvision]

Im on the opposite side of the spectrum. I set and forget, mainly because my wife has no patience for my fiddling with settings. She broke me of that habbit, too many nights we ended up not watching anything because i wasted foo much time tinkering. She get up and leave the end lol.. With my time imposed constraints most of that time is spent picking a movie then it needs to play quick like. The joys of married life. I dont blame here either i have ocd when it comes to that sort of stuff, most normal people dont care or cant tell a difference to waste that much time fiddling with settings before each movie or to adjust them to compensate for transfer shortcomings

[jrod8]

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses! They're much appreciated. I definitely want the best out of all content and figure there will be a good amount of adjustments when I first get a new set and, if I can save additional money beyond an OLED & the Panasonic UHD player, get a professional calibration. Just wanted some assurance that once it's properly set, I can eventually forget it. I'm staying with a friend right now who has a Vizio D Series 4K LCD and one of the early Samsung UHD players + my AppleTV 4K and it's driving me crazy because I want to tweak everything more than this set is capable of

[martydmc12]

Originally Posted by jrod8

Does anyone know if Panasonic is planning an updated version of this player or anything? I'm incredibly pleased with everything I read about this player, but trying to vet possible future options before spending $400-500 on this, as I'm not in immediate need of a standalone player.

I know there seems to be a lot of back and forth about whether or not Panasonic will ever release another 4K player. I have no idea myself what they'll do, but could the possibility of something like Filmmaker Mode be something Panasonic might want to add to a new machine, considering Panasonic is one of the companies backing filmmaker mode?

I still don't own a 4K player, and I want to stick with Panasonic, as they've always been my go-to brand. I still use my Panasonic LX-H680 Laserdisc player, and I'm currently using a DMP-BD60 Blu-ray player, and it's time to upgrade my Blu-ray player at this point. Question is, if Panasonic decides not to continue making any new players in the foreseeable future, what's a good estimation before they discontinue the 9000, or even the 820 for that matter? And will either of these players be sustainable like my LD player has been for nearly 25 years?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by martydmc12

I know there seems to be a lot of back and forth about whether or not Panasonic will ever release another 4K player. I have no idea myself what they'll do, but could the possibility of something like Filmmaker Mode be something Panasonic might want to add to a new machine, considering Panasonic is one of the companies backing filmmaker mode?

I still don't own a 4K player, and I want to stick with Panasonic, as they've always been my go-to brand. I still use my Panasonic LX-H680 Laserdisc player, and I'm currently using a DMP-BD60 Blu-ray player, and it's time to upgrade my Blu-ray player at this point. Question is, if Panasonic decides not to continue making any new players in the foreseeable future, what's a good estimation before they discontinue the 9000, or even the 820 for that matter? And will either of these players be sustainable like my LD player has been for nearly 25 years?

Filmmaker Mode has absolutely nothing to do with the player. All it does is turn all the extraneous processing off on a TV and set it to the proper colour temp and brightness output. If someone has done even the most basic calibration on their TV then they already have 'Filmmaker Mode', I'm not kidding.

[sapiendut]

Exactly. There is no difference between your current “movie mode” than “filmmaker mode”.

[Pagey123]

Originally Posted by jrod8

Apologies if this is a stupid noob question but do you all find yourselves adjusting your settings on the player and TVs very often? I'm finally considering upgrading from my beloved Panasonic ST50 Plasma but what I'm used to from 1080pSDR is a kind of "calibrate it and forget it" mentality - is that even a possibility with an OLED from LG or Sony and a player like this Panasonic? Or do you find yourselves constantly making adjustments from studio to studio, DV vs HDR10 vs HDR10+, etc.?

This right here. This is the main reason I only recently upgraded from a 40" FHD Sony to a 55" LG SM8600...and the reason I still don't have a UHD BD player. I got pretty darned good at popping in a BT.709 calibration disc (available as a free .iso download from AVS Forums), tweaking a few basic settings, and unless I just had a particularly bad panel...I was off to the races in minutes. I am familiar, at a high level/technical overview, of all the goodness that is HDR in its various flavors, etc., but I have to admit that I have yet to see a single HDR calibration test pattern live and in person. I have a horrible OCD nerve that was much, much more easily scratched in the BT.709/FHD days...so I dread aggravating it when I finally break down and purchase a UHD BD player. So, you can bet I'll be right here, irritating the hell out of you all with "let me ask you one more question" kinds of stuff, lol.

[tama]

Welp, the 500 Basic nit Optimizer experiment was fun while it lasted but is now over for me. Reverted back to the OLED 1000 nit setting.

[Neo4K]

Has it ever been cleared to what nits level SDR is mapped to?

[NKB2017]

If I'm currently using the Panasonic UB-9000 with a Pioneer KRP-600A KURO Plasma... what setting should I use for the TV type? OLED? Basic Luminance? Mid to High? Any ideas?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by NKB2017

If I'm currently using the Panasonic UB-9000 with a Pioneer KRP-600A KURO Plasma... what setting should I use for the TV type? OLED? Basic Luminance? Mid to High? Any ideas?

That setting doesn't apply because it's for the HDR Optimiser. You're going to be watching in converted SDR so just set it to SDR 709 in the other menu.

[NKB2017]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That setting doesn't apply because it's for the HDR Optimiser. You're going to be watching in converted SDR so just set it to SDR 709 in the other menu.

SDR 709 ? Gotcha, thank you so much Geoff D!

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

That setting doesn't apply because it's for the HDR Optimiser. You're going to be watching in converted SDR so just set it to SDR 709 in the other menu.

But the HDR Optimiser does work when converting HDR to SDR.

[NKB2017]

Originally Posted by rickardl

But the HDR Optimiser does work when converting HDR to SDR.

Really?

But in my case (watching on an old Pioneer KURO plasma) incapable of displaying at 4k in HDR... there is no point to having HDR or The Optimiser in play?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by rickardl

But the HDR Optimiser does work when converting HDR to SDR.

Still doesn't matter what you set the display type to though.

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by NKB2017

Really?

But in my case (watching on an old Pioneer KURO plasma) incapable of displaying at 4k in HDR... there is no point to having HDR or The Optimiser in play?

I have a Samsung Plasma from 2013 and turning the Optimizer On / Off greatly affects the image (not for all 4K titles as you all know).
I can post my other suggested settings for SDR viewing on my plasma later so you can try them out.

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Still doesn't matter what you set the display type to though.

I have not seen any change with altering the display type so, yes, that is probably right but I just wanted to point out that the HDR Optimizer do affect SDR viewing.

[EddieLarkin]

I have the UB820 and I'm thinking about getting a HZ2000 this year. Since the TV comes with the same Optimiser tech, I wonder if it's worth ditching the player so as to do away with the DV brightness flaw. Or is it something that affects DV from Panny sets as well?

And what to replace it with? Oppo is a no go these days, and I used to have an X700 but found the build quality to be awful and it was annoyingly loud.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by EddieLarkin

I have the UB820 and I'm thinking about getting a HZ2000 this year. Since the TV comes with the same Optimiser tech, I wonder if it's worth ditching the player so as to do away with the DV brightness flaw. Or is it something that affects DV from Panny sets as well?

And what to replace it with? Oppo is a no go these days, and I used to have an X700 but found the build quality to be awful and it was annoyingly loud.

Keep the Panny player! Even if you don't need the Optimiser the chroma upscaling tech in the player gives the best results I've yet seen with discs that have poorly compressed chroma.