Sony UBP-X700 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Croweyes1121]

Originally Posted by Cognitron

I own the UBP-X700 and I have some questions about Dolby Vision/HDR and 2K discs. My TV is an LG C4 OLED.

Why does Dolby Vision activate on 2K discs, even when the Dolby Vision logo is not present anywhere on the disc case?

Why does HDR activate on 2K discs when the HDR logo is not present anywhere on the disc case? (To my eyes, I can't tell a difference between the HDR that displays on HDR labeled 4K discs and 2K discs that have no HDR label.)

These are very good things! I'm just curious as to what's going on, as I thought HDR and Dolby Vision was just for 4K discs.

Thanks!

You have DV turned on in the settings. It's forcing everything already in HDR into DV, whether it has DV or not, and everything ELSE into HDR10 (even if it's just an SDR disc). You have to turn DV off unless a disc actually has DV.

[WiseJoeyD]

Originally Posted by FN2190

So I just flipped my player vertical and so far this solved any disc freeze issues.

After trying any and all of the advice on how to help mitigate the Layer 3 freeze on this X700 player, I read your post and it seemed that it just might work for mine.

So I went and tried it and it absolutely does!! I have a well documented list of discs and times when the freeze hits so I've been able to very quickly test it out and a lot of personal experience built up to compare it with.

It must be something to do with the travel of the laser pickup. On its side it somehow ensures it has enough room to continue tracking or something. Or maybe the heat is slowly warping the discs and by the time it's time to switch layers they're out of focal ranges. Unlikely but it has to be a physical misalignment of some sort.

I actually tested with the player upside down too. Curious if that would do anything but once again the test discs froze at the same points.


What is interesting is that for just about the first time ever, after it froze when being played flat, I turned it sideways and the disc actually instantly recovered, it did skip ahead a little bit I was able to rewind and replay the skip point with no issue anymore. Incredible, finally something that actually works repeatedly for me. Thanks

[Alister_M]

Lol, there's no way a player can generate enough heat to warp a disc. If your X-700 is heating up, it's because you've got it cramped in an overly small space and it can't ventilate properly. I can play a 3-hour movie on mine and the disc will still be cool to the touch when it's finished.

[Telemachus]

Plenty of UHDs I pull out are warm to the touch in both Sony and Panny, the discs do heat up quite a bit imo. And before you ask I live in an igloo so no problems with room heat.

[WiseJoeyD]

Yeah talking snidely about something they don't know anything about. Must be another day on an internet forum.
Also missed the main point about the sideways playback solving the problem which most of us are on this thread for (besides the Auto DV, or lack thereof).

Anyway to reiterate another point I made a while ago, I noted taking the entire top lid off actually helped enable complete uninterrupted playback in maybe two thirds of cases. However it just wasn't consistent enough to warrant the lack of protection to the circuitboard.

Given the tolerances at play something somewhere in the mechanisms or structure of the drive (or even yes possibly the discs) is throwing it off by the tiny amount necessary to have this thing fall over repeatedly and frustratingly for many of us owners. It is only speculation and it remains a curiosity why turning it sideways has finally seemed to resolve this. (Maybe their PlayStation team designed it and forgot it would only lay flat!)

[Telemachus]

I'm amazing the X700 can play sideways, but haven't tried it, not sure I would cause the tray obviously wasn't designed for it unless I missed that feature. I have had my PS3/PS4 sideways for ages, 360 too, it saves a ton of space that way.

[mdhaus]

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

I don't know if it helps, but the following Reddit comments are the closest things to a definitive answer I have found regarding this flaw, and why it's present in the first place. Of course, you should still take them with a grain of salt when it comes to veracity, as is the case with everything you read on the Internet, but I think this can still provide us with a little insight on what could be the primordial cause of the problem. I'm going to quote here the relevant fragments of the redditor's comments: It all practically boils down to the fact that narrow-minded Sony engineers with no foresight believed that Dolby Vision wasn't going to take off, and they practically rushed to tack it on the already designed player models when it, in fact, did take off. To sum it up, they say that Sony's players were not designed with Dolby Vision in mind, and therefore their hardware wasn't intended to handle it in the first place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/4kbluray/co...mment/l95dulr/



https://www.reddit.com/r/Bluray/comm...mment/ktt922u/

This makes zero sense to me. Why would they need specific hardware inside the machine to detect if a disc is encoded with Dolby Vision or not? Why can’t it be software code embedded into the OS / firmware of the player?

It doesn’t seem to me that the actual process is all that complicated - If the meta data of the disc from its initial scan shows Dolby Vision presence, the feature is turned on….If it does not, it’s turned off. The drive already has to read the basic authoring information anyway to determine the structure of the disc - Why can’t this also be one of those things?

[mdhaus]

Originally Posted by RougeBandana

There's no reason they couldn't simply add a Dolby Vision On/Off widget on the home screen beside the disc icon, and just move the USB stick and Screen Mirror icons one space right.

That would make whole DV toggling thing almost a non-issue.

The problem is not remembering how it was set last time you watched something, and having to check (up, up, right, enter, down, enter, return, return, down, down) so you don't start playing a BD or DVD in stupid fake DV.

That's a fair point. If they can't create an automatic check, then why not place the option directly on the main menu? That's a great idea.

[jess1581]

Originally Posted by Telemachus

And before you ask I live in an igloo so no problems with room heat.

I'll be bummed if this is just figurative.

[suspiciouscoffee]

I now have my player sitting on top of an old plastic CD rack to keep it off the wood cabinet and away from other machines. So far it’s working, my latest long movie (Casino) third-layer change resulted in only a split-second stutter instead of catastrophic failure.

[Croweyes1121]

Originally Posted by RougeBandana

Would be better to do it automatically, and they could update it to do that.

TBPH, as much hate as the manual toggling gets on this player, I have (begrudgingly) come to prefer it to automatic detection. There are (admittedly rare) instances where I actually want to force HDR10-only playback on a particular 4K disc (some DV layers introduce elevated blacks or ghosting errors). In those isolated cases, I like the ability to turn DV off when I want to. Having DV detected automatically means I lose that control / ability, which I've come to appreciate.

[SMOOT]

Originally Posted by WiseJoeyD

After trying any and all of the advice on how to help mitigate the Layer 3 freeze on this X700 player, I read your post and it seemed that it just might work for mine.

So I went and tried it and it absolutely does!! I have a well documented list of discs and times when the freeze hits so I've been able to very quickly test it out and a lot of personal experience built up to compare it with.

It must be something to do with the travel of the laser pickup. On its side it somehow ensures it has enough room to continue tracking or something. Or maybe the heat is slowly warping the discs and by the time it's time to switch layers they're out of focal ranges. Unlikely but it has to be a physical misalignment of some sort.

I actually tested with the player upside down too. Curious if that would do anything but once again the test discs froze at the same points.


What is interesting is that for just about the first time ever, after it froze when being played flat, I turned it sideways and the disc actually instantly recovered, it did skip ahead a little bit I was able to rewind and replay the skip point with no issue anymore. Incredible, finally something that actually works repeatedly for me. Thanks

So far I have never had a problem with the player*
(*Except for at the 23-minute or so mark with a brief pause on the 4K of Criterion "The 7th Victim", which seems to be a problem with just about every person on that disc forum except for those with a Playstation 5. So brief a hiccup as it was not a significant problem for me).

Still, I anticipate the day, and I would like to know

1. Do you load the player when it is Flat and then turn it on its side?

2. Which side ?

A note: My player sits on top of my cabinet, so air flows all around it. Plus the room is cool. Those things may have kept me from having any issue.

I also have a 2nd X700 for a smaller TV, but it is seldom used and fortunately has never been a problem (but, again, does not get used enough to make any judgment — usually only plays standard Blu-ray discs and DVD).

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by Croweyes1121

TBPH, as much hate as the manual toggling gets on this player, I have (begrudgingly) come to prefer it to automatic detection. There are (admittedly rare) instances where I actually want to force HDR10-only playback on a particular 4K disc (some DV layers introduce elevated blacks or ghosting errors). In those isolated cases, I like the ability to turn DV off when I want to. Having DV detected automatically means I lose that control / ability, which I've come to appreciate.

The equivalent manual method is also available on the auto-DV Panasonics. You can just go into the Picture menu and turn off Dolby Vision. Then no DV is sent to the display, just HDR10 if it's on the disk.

[LanceL]

Originally Posted by sherlockjr

Dolby Vision and HDR are just for 4K disks, but for reasons known to no one the Sonys are unable to automatically turn Dolby Vision on or off for each disk. If you have DV enabled in settings it will send that signal to your TV for every 4K or BD disk you play regardless of what's actually on that disk. And it will definitely result badly off colors and strange dynamic range on 4K material that isn't DV.

I'm not a pro at this thing, so take everything I say with a bowl of salt, but I just watched Nope 2022 (again) Blu-ray. The Dolby Vision tag came up but I didn't see anything wrong with the picture. Maybe I should watch the 4K UHD twice in a row. Once in DV and the second without. Do you think I would see an actual difference? I mean, every time I have watched the movie the DV tag comes up because my player is set for DV for discs so I don't have to go back in and change the setting.

[Herry Dunston]

Just on a random conjecture, I put on Kino's Eternal Sunshine 4K disc. Wipe the back of the disc with a microfiber cloth before placing it on the disk tray. The player plays the entire movie without issue. Someone here mentioned particles on the disc that might be a culprit behind the third-layer freezing issue. I also wiped the back of the 4K disc of Godzilla Minus One, but only because the disc was loose inside the steelbook case and I had to wipe out any scuffs and specks I see, and the player played the entire movie just fine.

One would think that wiping the discs would absolve everything. However, I remember washing and wiping the 4K disc for After Hours after discovering the freezing issue, and putting the clean disc back to play it again didn't absolve the issue. Still had to request a replacement in the end. Wiping the disc before use may not change a thing. Although I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add the wiping to the regiment alongside keeping the USB stick in the player.

[suspiciouscoffee]

Scarface froze up on me today, once again almost exactly 2 hours into the movie just like every other triple layer disc (except Casino which merely stuttered for half a second at the 2hr mark and mercifully kept right along). I’d wiped it down, the player was raised well above the cabinet to allow air flow, and still I was right back to square one with it totally frozen up. This time I just unscrewed the top of the case and resumed the movie with all the guts exposed. I expect it to work for maybe one more disc and go right back to catastrophic failure. I hate to say it but the player’s simply a piece of junk.

[LanceL]

Watched the UHD of Mad Max Fury Road yesterday. An error came on the screen claiming that I didn't have the player connected to a 4K tv. Umm, yes, it is. I pressed okay, and it just goes to the menu. I pressed play and it played. Not sure what that was about.

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by suspiciouscoffee

Scarface froze up on me today, once again almost exactly 2 hours into the movie just like every other triple layer disc (except Casino which merely stuttered for half a second at the 2hr mark and mercifully kept right along). I’d wiped it down, the player was raised well above the cabinet to allow air flow, and still I was right back to square one with it totally frozen up. This time I just unscrewed the top of the case and resumed the movie with all the guts exposed. I expect it to work for maybe one more disc and go right back to catastrophic failure. I hate to say it but the player’s simply a piece of junk.

Have you tried leaving a USB drive in the front port? I mean, it's still probably snake oil but it sure as hell works for mine.

[suspiciouscoffee]

Originally Posted by Alister_M

Have you tried leaving a USB drive in the front port? I mean, it's still probably snake oil but it sure as hell works for mine.

Yes, which was even by accident because I just used a USB drive once and never took it out. No effect..

[Nosferatu31]

I watched Scarface about 2 weeks ago and had no issues.