Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Telemachus]

Gotta shill to pay the bills, can't just make 90 second straightforward informational bideos and be blessed by le algorithm, pls like and suscribe

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by Telemachus

Gotta shill to pay the bills, can't just make 90 second straightforward informational bideos and be blessed by le algorithm, pls like and suscribe

That’s why my channel is making practically no money at all. I try not to pad my videos more than what I think it’s needed. You need to make 12 minute videos to make $$. When the video is less than 5 minutes, the potential income drops by 70% and in reality the income drops by around 85%.

It’s tough to even break even if you don’t shill. I don’t shill therefore no $$$. And you run a very real risk to be blacklisted by the company whose item tou review (if the review is negative)

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by danny24

Yes in a way they don't and can't stop a surge going through your outlet after a close lightning strike. Obviously people can't catch it in time some may be working,sleeping,at school. Best bet is to unplug the outlet from the wall during a storm with bad lightning. I actually had a surge protector and the TV still got fried.

I’ve had my system “saved” by surge protectors. Twice. Once using a Monster power center and another using Tripp Isobar. They were destroyed but the equipments are fine.

[Telemachus]

Remember when people just had hobbies and no income was involved? Pepperidge Farm remembers. I salute you for not shilling, and I still remember when Youtube was mostly cat vids and video replies pre-2007.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by Telemachus

Did bro pick up Little Caesars with the mail lol

Yes I did! The new stuffed cheesy crust pepperoni.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by danny24

Yes in a way they don't and can't stop a surge going through your outlet after a close lightning strike. Obviously people can't catch it in time some may be working,sleeping,at school. Best bet is to unplug the outlet from the wall during a storm with bad lightning. I actually had a surge protector and the TV still got fried.

I agree the best way to avoid catastrophic electronics failure during a storm is to unplug everything. Of course, that’s difficult if one is not home.

My house had a major hit and actually started a small fire in the garage. My phone line (still had a landline at the time for DSL) was completely fried and smoke came out of my router. Anything plugged into the router was fried. Verizon had to rewire the house.

My OLED was dead along with my ps4, all directv boxes, and my Onkyo receiver. Lightning works in mysterious ways as my OPPO..plugged into the same receiver survived the strike. My split system HVAC did not survive and insurance refused to replace it ‘cause they suck.

Sent you a PM!

[tama]

My ub820 is struggling more and more to read disc right off the bat. Takes me a few tries before it read.

Are those disc lens cleaners safe to use on these? This king of spending 10 bucks to give it try to see.if may excess dust is on the laser lens.

[Tim n Tempe]

Originally Posted by tama

My ub820 is struggling more and more to read disc right off the bat. Takes me a few tries before it read.

Are those disc lens cleaners safe to use on these? This king of spending 10 bucks to give it try to see.if may excess dust is on the laser lens.

open the disc tray and blow some compressed air in there with the straw attached to the can.

[Telemachus]

I've had some time with this player now and have noticed what I like/dislike about it.

Likes: Plays everything so far, zero problems, set it and forget it. Some discs don't vibrate in this like the Sony I have. Resume seems to work faster/more consistantly than my Sony. Subtitle dimming, how did I ever live with this it's amazing. HDR optimizer, only need it for one disc so far (Heat) but it's great. Panny 9000 remote is a big upgrade. 1080p discs look better with player upscaling. Really everything looks better.

Dislikes: Slow menus reminds me of the 2010 Playstation UI, very slow to recover if the UI goes into a dive (had to pull plug once), don't dare hit the Nefflix button. I completely locked the player up fiddling too much with some menus in some Discotek Anime Blu rays/UHDs playing and restarting different things. Louder than my Sony in a way because of this intermittent click I hear that comes through quiet scenes. An absolute pain to demo back and forth between audio tracks, the Sony is lightning fast compared. OSD will sometimes get stuck and I need to manually get rid of it when a disc starts up.

[danny24]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

I agree the best way to avoid catastrophic electronics failure during a storm is to unplug everything. Of course, that’s difficult if one is not home.

My house had a major hit and actually started a small fire in the garage. My phone line (still had a landline at the time for DSL) was completely fried and smoke came out of my router. Anything plugged into the router was fried. Verizon had to rewire the house.

My OLED was dead along with my ps4, all directv boxes, and my Onkyo receiver. Lightning works in mysterious ways as my OPPO..plugged into the same receiver survived the strike. My split system HVAC did not survive and insurance refused to replace it ‘cause they suck.

Sent you a PM!

That really sucks to lose your OLED,PS4,Onkyo receiver. I feel for you. Glad all that had to be done was a rewire after that. Lightning can be scary and dangerous sometimes. Those Oppo players are so well made they survive surges!

Originally Posted by Telemachus

I've had some time with this player now and have noticed what I like/dislike about it.

Likes: Plays everything so far, zero problems, set it and forget it. Some discs don't vibrate in this like the Sony I have. Resume seems to work faster/more consistantly than my Sony. Subtitle dimming, how did I ever live with this it's amazing. HDR optimizer, only need it for one disc so far (Heat) but it's great. Panny 9000 remote is a big upgrade. 1080p discs look better with player upscaling. Really everything looks better.

Dislikes: Slow menus reminds me of the 2010 Playstation UI, very slow to recover if the UI goes into a dive (had to pull plug once), don't dare hit the Nefflix button. I completely locked the player up fiddling too much with some menus in some Discotek Anime Blu rays/UHDs playing and restarting different things. Louder than my Sony in a way because of this intermittent click I hear that comes through quiet scenes. An absolute pain to demo back and forth between audio tracks, the Sony is lightning fast compared. OSD will sometimes get stuck and I need to manually get rid of it when a disc starts up.

I have the nicer remote and fortunately I never hit the Netflix button.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by danny24

That really sucks to lose your OLED,PS4,Onkyo receiver. I feel for you. Glad all that had to be done was a rewire after that. Lightning can be scary and dangerous sometimes. Those Oppo players are so well made they survive surges!

.

I was thinking the same thing. The OPPO is indestructible! The lightning story was a brief synopsis..heh. Also had to rewire the garage along with new outlets and a fuse box. The insurance company also paid a dude to drive 6 hours round trip to replace my main board for $750. IDK why they didn’t just buy me a new tv instead.

Played probably 20 or so movies on my 820 and zero issues so far. A great player for the money.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by Telemachus

Dislikes: Slow menus reminds me of the 2010 Playstation UI, very slow to recover if the UI goes into a dive (had to pull plug once), don't dare hit the Nefflix button. I completely locked the player up fiddling too much with some menus in some Discotek Anime Blu rays/UHDs playing and restarting different things. Louder than my Sony in a way because of this intermittent click I hear that comes through quiet scenes. An absolute pain to demo back and forth between audio tracks, the Sony is lightning fast compared. OSD will sometimes get stuck and I need to manually get rid of it when a disc starts up.

The slow menus and UI, as the people working on the region free patch discovered, come from the fact that the player constantly sits at 100% CPU utilization. The code is a mess, as it was not written from scratch, the way it should've been, but instead Panasonic have been repurposing and adding new stuff to their DVD era one. The firmware itself is also used on other devices as well, including satellites, funny enough.

[danny24]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

I was thinking the same thing. The OPPO is indestructible! The lightning story was a brief synopsis..heh. Also had to rewire the garage along with new outlets and a fuse box. The insurance company also paid a dude to drive 6 hours round trip to replace my main board for $750. IDK why they didn’t just buy me a new tv instead.

Played probably 20 or so movies on my 820 and zero issues so far. A great player for the money.

Oh yeah I remember you mentioned something like that about the OLED before. Replacing the whole TV would definitely have made more sense.

Glad your 820 is working flawlessly so far. I have not had any problems with mine so far either.

[hansolo]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

The slow menus and UI, as the people working on the region free patch discovered, come from the fact that the player constantly sits at 100% CPU utilization. The code is a mess, as it was not written from scratch, the way it should've been, but instead Panasonic have been repurposing and adding new stuff to their DVD era one. The firmware itself is also used on other devices as well, including satellites, funny enough.

More precisely, I think, two of the four cores in SoC are constantly running at 100% executing tasks with no purpose. RF hack people have already discovered how to disable one of the tasks freeing the third core for the other tasks and also reducing constant heat load generated by the player SoC. I was also surprised to learn what kind of patchwork the firmware is in the player considered one of the best in its price range. Note, the same FW binary is used in the high end Panasonic 9000!

Originally Posted by mkc

I'm sure this has been answered already, but there's too many pages to trawl through, so I'm going to ask it anyway:

Why does the 820 sometimes force Dolby Vision? I've got two titles that are 100% confirmed to HDR10 only (Castle Rock Season 1 and the theatrical cut of Evil Dead 2013), but my 820 insists on outputting them in Dolby Vision.

Re: Evil Dead. The longer version is in DV. Panasonic players tend to the convert everything in disc into DV if the main feature is in DV format. This means logos, intros, disclaimers, menus, SDR extras,... It is a known "bug" or more likely a feature in Pannies. Don't know why it happens with the Castle Rock 4K. Maybe there is something brief at the disc start coded in the DV format. Just guessing.

Edit: Castle Rock 4K. I found these posts

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...2&postcount=46 (Philips stating content is DV but outputting HDR10)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=59 (Panasonic stating content is HDR10 but outputting DV)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...0&postcount=60 (confirmation that the files are indeed HDR10 only)

Crazy

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by hansolo

More precisely, I think, two of the four cores in SoC are constantly running at 100% executing tasks with no purpose. RF hack people have already discovered how to disable one of the tasks freeing the third core for the other tasks and also reducing constant heat load generated by the player SoC. I was also surprised to learn what kind of patchwork the firmware is in the player considered one of the best in its price range. Note, the same FW binary is used in the high end Panasonic 9000!

It's also the reason why the player can't read most of the common audio formats when playing a file from a USB stick, despite having no problems with those same audio formats when they're on a disc. Because the code for the UBS playback is different from the one for the Disc drive, and it's easy to tell which of the two was half-assed.

There's so much more potential with the player if they can manage to fix some of these issues.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by hansolo

More precisely, I think, two of the four cores in SoC are constantly running at 100% executing tasks with no purpose. RF hack people have already discovered how to disable one of the tasks freeing the third core for the other tasks and also reducing constant heat load generated by the player SoC. I was also surprised to learn what kind of patchwork the firmware is in the player considered one of the best in its price range. Note, the same FW binary is used in the high end Panasonic 9000!


Re: Evil Dead. The longer version is in DV. Panasonic players tend to the convert everything in disc into DV if the main feature is in DV format. This means logos, intros, disclaimers, menus, SDR extras,... It is a known "bug" or more likely a feature in Pannies. Don't know why it happens with the Castle Rock 4K. Maybe there is something brief at the disc start coded in the DV format. Just guessing.

Edit: Castle Rock 4K. I found these posts

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...2&postcount=46 (Philips stating content is DV but outputting HDR10)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=59 (Panasonic stating content is HDR10 but outputting DV)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...0&postcount=60 (confirmation that the files are indeed HDR10 only)

Crazy

Yes, it was a dead giveaway re: the players sharing the same software stuff when the 420/820/9000 always got updated firmware at the same time, from the same file even. IIRC the previous region freedom goober managed to unlock all the 9000's features on the other two players (aside from DV on the 420 as that needs its own dedicated chippery or whatever?).

I had another Warners UHD that flipped DV on the Panny despite being an HDR10-only disc, I think it was one of the DC animated movies? As you say, if the player detects DV then it converts everything on the fookin disc into DV, even SDR (did that with Duel last night when I went to have a look at the dreadfully upscaled TV version). Those Warners titles must have some junk code in there which is tripping it as you say. It's an apparent 'feature' of the player, I guess it does it to reduce the handshaking from one format to another? Much like how it won't output some mono audio as mono, it outputs it in a 5.1 container for some goofy reason.

[Doctor Jack]

My Sonyx700 is now officially freezing or skipping on every 4k disc. I think it’s dying. So I said screw it and ordered this from bestbuy. I know it was a little lower a week or so ago but I’m getting sick of the freezing. Happens every disc during either the second layer change or third. Hopefully this player works out.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by Doctor Jack

My Sonyx700 is now officially freezing or skipping on every 4k disc. I think it’s dying. So I said screw it and ordered this from bestbuy. I know it was a little lower a week or so ago but I’m getting sick of the freezing. Happens every disc during either the second layer change or third. Hopefully this player works out.

It’s a solid player and the best all around, imo. Just be sure to upgrade your remote. My Chinese knock off works great!

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by mkc

Thanks.

So, in the cases where SDR and HDR10 content is output as Dolby Vision, is the player actually adding DV, or is it more like it being falsely tagged (i.e. its still actually SDR/HDR10)?

It's forcing the content into DV. For HDR10 it's in the HDR space anyway, right, so you'd hardly notice any difference, but for SDR it's adding a totally different transfer function on top and it can have some bizarre effects, blowing out whites and making the grain run rampant.

[timfitz99]

Anyone else have issues where certain DolbyVision discs on the 820 play only audio unless you turn off DolbyVision on the player? After that of course they just play in Hdr10. Not the end of the world, but annoying for a player I bought so I wouldn’t have to manual tirn on DolbyVision as I do on my Sony x800m2.

Discs affected so far are Godzilla vs Kong and Godzilla King of the Monsters (both from Warners). Both play in DolbyVision on my Sony, same hdmi cable.