Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[panasonicst60]

Originally Posted by MrHT

Is there an easy way to sell a 43" TV? I'd prefer not to lug that thing around just to get chump change for it. That is my issue, and I don't want to be wasteful and just throw it out.

Garage sale or donation

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by panasonicst60

Garage sale or donation

I would have to think about it. Ideally, I'd like a TV to have at least 5-6 years of use before I consider upgrading. If I happen to find some good deals this Black Friday, maybe I might consider it.

Another issue is my TV furniture stand. And you can see in the picture, it's narrow and flimsy. I hope OLED TVs are lighter than LED TVs, otherwise it could collapse the stand. The narrowness of my stand is not the biggest issue since I can always get a VESA universal center stand, but my issue is the added weight from going from 43" to 55". I admit tho, for an LED TV, my 43" TV is rather heavy so I'd be surprised if the new thinner OLED TV would end up being heavier.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by MrHT

Is there an easy way to sell a 43" TV? I'd prefer not to lug that thing around just to get chump change for it. That is my issue, and I don't want to be wasteful and just throw it out.

Craigslist? I'm sure you could have someone come around and pick it up. Depending on where you live, that could be a great idea or a bad idea

Definitely don't just throw it out. Someone could definitely use it.

Originally Posted by Compson

Hard to tell from a picture of a monitor, but the SDR looks oversaturated to me. You might try raising the TV’s color level for HDR and see if it’s more to your liking.

There's no way to make that setup good when watching HDR.

Maybe except for adding a Lumagen Radiance Pro, but you could get ten 55" OLEDs for what one of those costs...

Originally Posted by MrHT

Another issue is my TV furniture stand. And you can see in the picture, it's narrow and flimsy. I hope OLED TVs are lighter than LED TVs, otherwise it could collapse the stand. The narrowness of my stand is not the biggest issue since I can always get a VESA universal center stand, but my issue is the added weight from going from 43" to 55". I admit tho, for an LED TV, my 43" TV is rather heavy so I'd be surprised if the new thinner OLED TV would end up being heavier.

A "base model" 55" OLED from Panasonic seems to be just under 60 pounds. Given the size and looking at your pic on the previous page, it seems like you'll have to do some rearranging either way.

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Craigslist? I'm sure you could have someone come around and pick it up. Depending on where you live, that could be a great idea or a bad idea
...
Given the size and looking at your pic on the previous page, it seems like you'll have to do some rearranging either way.

Yeah, and that's the issue. All of that is way too much work all because of my UHD player that I can't get right. Like I said, with streaming, there's an easy workaround of just watching 4K SDR content, but can't do that with UHD discs.

A simpler solution is just do what you said earlier and just stop buying UHD discs and continue watching regular BDs.

[ronboster]

Originally Posted by MrHT

Yeah. All I have to say is that next time, I should take the advice from AVS Forum with a grain of salt. The posters there were the ones that told me this Sony X800E was a good TV and they were the ones that told me the Panny UB420 would fix my HDR issue since the player has good tone mapping.

I'm sure some members there have good expertise, but I feel like many of them probably pose as "experts" when they really aren't.

Next time, I need to research and learn all about the proper specs and use that to do some independent research on my end and not rely solely on opinionated reviews.

That's advice for any recommendations coming from a forum of strangers. I shake my head when someone goes to a forum and wants to be spoon fed which piece of electronics to buy. I'm not saying you did this.

The best thing is doing the research and coming up with a short list....present that short list in a forum where you are familiar with the others. This takes a lot of time and the assumption is you spend your leisure time at a particular forum even when not in the market.

There are a crap load of members that do know what they are talking about on AVS....there are also members WHO THINK they know what they are talking about (but do not) and love to share with newbies their perspective. I can think of one member who hangs out in the speaker forum and takes great delight in helping new ppl, but his perspective is so flawed he leads ppl up the wrong path.

[chip75]

There should be questions before you decide on a display purchase, if you're looking at OLED, the first one is, when do you watch most of your content? then, how is the light pollution in your viewing area?

If your TV has direct sunlight on it then an OLED might not be suitable unless you can control the light. If you can't you might want to look at mini-LEDs or a high end LCD with FALD. If so, do you need a wider viewing angle if you view off center or have seating that is.

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by ronboster

That's advice for any recommendations coming from a forum of strangers. I shake my head when someone goes to a forum and wants to be spoon fed which piece of electronics to buy. I'm not saying you did this.

What I did do moreso than anything else was trust the Sony brand. Back in 2009 when LCD TVs were fairly new, you could never go wrong with a Sony or Samsung brand. Not so much the case anymore as there are so many bells and whistles on TVs today than even the best brands could do very well on the bells but not the whistles. I wanted a 43" size TV, so I saw that this TV was one of the few Sony brands at that size. So I had my eye on it, saw great positive Customer reviews on Amazon, and then asked on AVS, and everyone there agreed that the TV was good.

Like I said, I relied too much on brand name and opinions of strangers to determine my decision rather than studying the ins and outs of the TV specs. For example, I could've researched about HDR and saw that 1,000 nits is the minimum for proper HDR, then I could've easily seen which TV has acceptable HDR just by looking at the specs on rtings. But I didn't do that. I took the general opinion of strangers and was like, "hey its Sony, you can't go wrong" and then made my purchase.

[ronboster]

Originally Posted by MrHT

What I did do moreso than anything else was trust the Sony brand. Back in 2009 when LCD TVs were fairly new, you could never go wrong with a Sony or Samsung brand. Not so much the case anymore as there are so many bells and whistles on TVs today than even the best brands could do very well on the bells but not the whistles. I wanted a 43" size TV, so I saw that this TV was one of the few Sony brands at that size. So I had my eye on it, saw great positive Customer reviews on Amazon, and then asked on AVS, and everyone there agreed that the TV was good.

Like I said, I relied too much on brand name and opinions of strangers to determine my decision rather than studying the ins and outs of the TV specs. For example, I could've researched about HDR and saw that 1,000 nits is the minimum for proper HDR, then I could've easily seen which TV has acceptable HDR just by looking at the specs on rtings. But I didn't do that. I took the general opinion of strangers and was like, "hey its Sony, you can't go wrong" and then made my purchase.

We've all been there with new tech. If I knew now about projectors when I bought my first couple....

[chip75]

Originally Posted by MrHT

I could've researched about HDR and saw that 1,000 nits is the minimum for proper HDR, then I could've easily seen which TV has acceptable HDR just by looking at the specs on rtings. But I didn't do that. I took the general opinion of strangers and was like, "hey its Sony, you can't go wrong" and then made my purchase.

Honestly if you'd asked a regular on here they'd have told you were getting a basically an SDR TV that recognizes HDR, but can't do much with it.

Remember with all manufacturers they'll offer something entry level for folks who trust the brand, but offer not much more than a logo.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

I'm not sure if this topic has been covered, but the Panasonic 820 and 420 players can be made to use remote network IP control. It's not just for the 9000.


Make sure your player is attached to your home Wifi or have an Ethernet cable connected to your router. Under Network in the player's setup menu, go to Voice Control and turn it on. Then go to the website that shows up on the screen and create a simple account with Panasonic. Once done and account verified, go back and login at that same original player website and login with your user account name and password. Then it will ask to register your player's ID and password, which is showing on the screen.


It will then show your player in their system. Then push the third option on your player to use the password the Panasonic server system generated. It will list a MAC address on the screen.


Now, the 820 and 420 will be re-discoverable on your network device list with a new network IP address and be controllable by IP remote apps like Roomie Remote, Control4, Harmony, etc.


Panasonic did not make this easy, but at least the feature is available.

[thebob8530]

Originally Posted by MrHT

I tried, it's not good. My TV has poorly washed out black levels on HDR mode and not even the Panny's HDR optimizer can fix it. I need to use SDR BT 2020 to completely stop the TV from any sort of tone mapping and leave it to the player to do the job completely.

if you are using the hdr optimizer i would try turning it off- not saying that will solve your problem but it's worth a try

[Spooked]

Originally Posted by Matt89

So I picked up my UB820 a couple weeks back, upgraded from a Sony X700 (huge upgrade btw lol got so sick of having to manually switch DV on/off, and the freezing was starting to drive me nuts). Overall, I'm loving it. I've only really had the fluctuating brightness issue on Kino's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and SC's UHD of The Fog but another issue I've noticed is sometimes when I play back 1080p discs, the gamma levels are raised. Like the black bars look greyish instead of a deep black. I pop the same disc into my region-free Sony BDP-S1200 and those issues are not there. Not sure why the 820 is doing this. Paramount's Region A disc of Titanic has this issue, as does Powerhouse's disc of Roadgames. Has anyone else had this problem? Firmware is up to date.

Also, had no idea this player was essentially region free. Using the Top Menu trick or hitting 1 and then OK has worked on nearly every Region B disc I've tested. The only one I've found to be hard locked to Region B is 88 Films' blu of Terror Train. I tested out dozens of discs and they pretty much all worked. Pretty cool. The only issue is the gamma thing that's going on with some 1080 discs.

~Matt

Apologies for dredging up the past, but what exactly is the 'top menu' trick? Can someone enlighten me? This player really does sound like the best thing out there right now. (I was this close to pulling the trigger on a region-free modified Sony earlier this morning.)

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Spooked

Apologies for dredging up the past, but what exactly is the 'top menu' trick? Can someone enlighten me? This player really does sound like the best thing out there right now. (I was this close to pulling the trigger on a region-free modified Sony earlier this morning.)

When the region coding message appears, you press the TOP MENU button (I think there's combination of STOP and/or you may have to press TOP MENU several times) and the disc often plays, even if locked. It's not 100% successful.

[Spooked]

Originally Posted by chip75

When the region coding message appears, you press the TOP MENU button (I think there's combination of STOP and/or you may have to press TOP MENU several times) and the disc often plays, even if locked. It's not 100% successful.

Thank you!

[Doomhunter]

Originally Posted by MrHT

Is there an easy way to sell a 43" TV? I'd prefer not to lug that thing around just to get chump change for it. That is my issue, and I don't want to be wasteful and just throw it out.

If you were just getting rid of it I imagine you could ask your local library if they were interested

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by thebob8530

if you are using the hdr optimizer i would try turning it off- not saying that will solve your problem but it's worth a try

I did. Surprisingly, even though there's a lot of hype about Panny's hdr optimizer, it actually worsens the contrast at time. For example, when watching "A Clockwork Orange", some of the white levels get very bright. This particular title seems to reach a very high peak brightness at times. So when you turn the optimizer on, those bright whites dim down and and lose details. If I turn it off, it gets very bright on my TV and retains the details.

I have absolutely no issue with the clarity of 4K HDR on my TV. The detail is all there. And honestly, the de-saturated colors become sort of a good thing because sometimes when watching SDR, the overblown colors drown out the details. For example, the freckles on a person's face become less clearer because its drowned out by the "hot orange" color of their face. By HDR easing down the saturation of the colors, I get more detail. So basically, I get less of an "eye candy" effect, but more detail. However, what IS the biggest issue with my TV is the black levels. They are nice and deep in SDR mode, but once HDR mode is on, they become sort of grayish. It's not too obvious on bright scenes, but when the scenes are very dark, it looks quite poor. Considering that many Netflix shows like "Ozark" are very dark, watching 4K HDR on Netflix is just out of the question.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by MrHT

I did. Surprisingly, even though there's a lot of hype about Panny's hdr optimizer, it actually worsens the contrast at time. For example, when watching "A Clockwork Orange", some of the white levels get very bright. This particular title seems to reach a very high peak brightness at times. So when you turn the optimizer on, those bright whites dim down and and lose details. If I turn it off, it gets very bright on my TV and retains the details.

I have absolutely no issue with the clarity of 4K HDR on my TV. The detail is all there. And honestly, the de-saturated colors become sort of a good thing because sometimes when watching SDR, the overblown colors drown out the details. For example, the freckles on a person's face become less clearer because its drowned out by the "hot orange" color of their face. By HDR easing down the saturation of the colors, I get more detail. So basically, I get less of an "eye candy" effect, but more detail. However, what IS the biggest issue with my TV is the black levels. They are nice and deep in SDR mode, but once HDR mode is on, they become sort of grayish. It's not too obvious on bright scenes, but when the scenes are very dark, it looks quite poor. Considering that many Netflix shows like "Ozark" are very dark, watching 4K HDR on Netflix is just out of the question.

Yes, at times the Panny's HDR Optimizer can make the picture look worse although the majority of the time, it helps. What setting do you have the Optimizer set at?? Sometimes, that makes a huge difference.

From what I can tell, your TV model is an entry to mid level Sony 4K HDR Television. This means that you can't expect it to handle HDR just as good as a top tier level Sony 4K HDR TV. That's just the reality of TVs. The more you pay, the better the TV. Plus. this model is from 2017. TV manufacturers were still working on how HDR should work. Some can argue they are still doing that toi this day, but that's another story.

Now, you an get it calibrated to make it look as good as it gets, but the handling of HDR will still not be as good. That's what the Panny HDR Optimizer is for. It's made for TVs and projectors that don't handle HDR as well as other TVs.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by chip75

There should be questions before you decide on a display purchase, if you're looking at OLED, the first one is, when do you watch most of your content? then, how is the light pollution in your viewing area?

If your TV has direct sunlight on it then an OLED might not be suitable unless you can control the light. If you can't you might want to look at mini-LEDs or a high end LCD with FALD. If so, do you need a wider viewing angle if you view off center or have seating that is.

You're never going to get good picture quality using any sort of display if you can't/won't control the light.

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

Yes, at times the Panny's HDR Optimizer can make the picture look worse although the majority of the time, it helps. What setting do you have the Optimizer set at?? Sometimes, that makes a huge difference.

From what I can tell, your TV model is an entry to mid level Sony 4K HDR Television. This means that you can't expect it to handle HDR just as good as a top tier level Sony 4K HDR TV. That's just the reality of TVs. The more you pay, the better the TV. Plus. this model is from 2017. TV manufacturers were still working on how HDR should work. Some can argue they are still doing that toi this day, but that's another story.

Now, you an get it calibrated to make it look as good as it gets, but the handling of HDR will still not be as good. That's what the Panny HDR Optimizer is for. It's made for TVs and projectors that don't handle HDR as well as other TVs.

I tried all settings on the Optimizer and nothing works well. The Optimizer seems to meant mainly for bright levels that exceed a certain number of nits, and probably does work well on TVs that don't handle it well, such as Projectors. But my TV has no issues handling really bright levels, at least I don't notice any. What my TV DOES have issues with is black levels, which the Optimizer doesn't help at all with.

[MrHT]

Originally Posted by chip75

There should be questions before you decide on a display purchase, if you're looking at OLED, the first one is, when do you watch most of your content? then, how is the light pollution in your viewing area?

If your TV has direct sunlight on it then an OLED might not be suitable unless you can control the light. If you can't you might want to look at mini-LEDs or a high end LCD with FALD. If so, do you need a wider viewing angle if you view off center or have seating that is.

Yeah, I was doing a little research the past 24 hours and see there are downfalls to an OLED TV. First, there's burn in issues. Second, it seems like OLEDs aren't as bright as LEDs. And then not to mention that as time goes by, TVs are manufactured with less durability not only because people upgrade quicker now, but also because the pandemic affected the global manufacturing factories and quality control has diminished.

So there are some caveats I need to be aware of and I probably need to research about this more before I run out ASAP and buy a $1,000 TV. Now I'm not saying all $1,000 OLED TVs are a piece of junk, but what I am saying is that something that expensive needs some time and research before I rush out and buy it.