Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Robert Zohn]

@Waboman, thank you for asking me for the Nintendo switch!

Sorry we're not Nintendo dealers, but it's a good line for us to sell.

[bguzman]

Pandemic schmandemic, the Waboman and solarrdadd show will live on for ever and ever!

[spider-neil]

Pleased with this 4K player but I am going to get rid when the Playstation 5 comes out because it's a little pointless having two 4K players. Hopefully, Sony does as good a job with 4K as Panasonic.

[Cap.T]

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

I ask almost every time I speak with them. Sorry to say it's very unlikely we'll see Panasonic TVs back in the US.

That's too bad for the US folks. I from Germany and luckely Panasonic is still sellling it's TVs here. I had my eye on a Panasonic 65GZ1500-Series TV for a few month now and finally pulled the trigger last week. It replaced my Samsung 65KS9000 and while I expected there to be some difference in picture quality my jaw kind of dropped to the floor when I saw just how much of a difference it was. This TV, my UB820 and the Apple TV4K are going to be my setup for a long time I think. I really hope that Panasonic will change it's approach for the US market and sell it's TVs there again. There really, realy great devices.

[RodChester]

Originally Posted by spider-neil

Hopefully, Sony does as good a job with 4K as Panasonic.

They won’t.

[pbz06]

I'm struggling to understand what the Deep Color setting does, especially for UHD.

When I have it OFF, and resolution on Auto (watched Rise of Skywalker), it output at 4:2:2 and 12bit. I had Dolby Vision manually disabled for testing.

Seems it does similar for HDR10, but also 12bit. Can't get 10bit output. So if it still outputs 12bit, then what's the point of it Off or Auto?

I did also test an SDR movie and see that it outputs 4:4:4 8bit so does it only affect SDR?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

I'm struggling to understand what the Deep Color setting does, especially for UHD.

When I have it OFF, and resolution on Auto (watched Rise of Skywalker), it output at 4:2:2 and 12bit. I had Dolby Vision manually disabled for testing.

Seems it does similar for HDR10, but also 12bit. Can't get 10bit output. So if it still outputs 12bit, then what's the point of it Off or Auto?

I did also test an SDR movie and see that it outputs 4:4:4 8bit so does it only affect SDR?

Deep Colour has always been rather misleading when it comes to players, as it relates solely to bit depth rather than actual colour!

When set to Auto then most players will uprate the content to the highest bit depth that the TV will allow, usually 12 bit, and I'm not just talking about UHD here as the exact same thing was true for regular Blu-ray players and 1080p HD TVs. Content was and is 8-bit, the players just upsampled it to 12-bit anyway.

But with my 820 I can get 'native' 10-bit output from UHD by using the 10-bit priority setting.

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

But with my 820 I can get 'native' 10-bit output from UHD by using the 10-bit priority setting.

Any hints on what S&M patterns are useful for evaluating which depth works best?

[Geoff D]

For bit depth then you'd need a banding torture test, I can't recall if there's a quantisation test on the S&M UHD though.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Deep Colour has always been rather misleading when it comes to players, as it relates solely to bit depth rather than actual colour!

When set to Auto then most players will uprate the content to the highest bit depth that the TV will allow, usually 12 bit, and I'm not just talking about UHD here as the exact same thing was true for regular Blu-ray players and 1080p HD TVs. Content was and is 8-bit, the players just upsampled it to 12-bit anyway.

But with my 820 I can get 'native' 10-bit output from UHD by using the 10-bit priority setting.

Thanks. That is confusing, so I was looking at it wrong.

I'm just in the middle of experimenting and testing movies and the S&M disc...to see which combo settings I prefer (if I can even tell a difference) between 4:4:4, 4:2:2, and deep colour.

[Geoff D]

Just for reference, here are the 'Deep Colour' settings

[Show spoiler]

and on each one I get the following results, this is with 'Colour Space' set to YCbCr Automatic when playing a 10-bit UHD HDR10 source:

Deep Colour - Auto (12-bit priority): 12-bit 4:4:4 output (third bar down from the top is the output)




Deep Colour - Auto (10-bit priority): 10-bit 4:4:4 output




Deep Colour - Off: 12-bit 4:2:2 output

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Just for reference, here are the 'Deep Colour' settings and on each one I get the following results, this is with 'Colour Space' set to YCbCr Automatic when playing a 10-bit UHD HDR10 source:

Deep Colour - Auto (12-bit priority): 12-bit 4:4:4 output (third bar down from the top is the output)

Deep Colour - Auto (10-bit priority): 10-bit 4:4:4 output

Deep Colour - Off: 12-bit 4:2:2 output

OK, just tried again earlier and yes I got the exact same results.

For SDR when I have on YCbRc Auto, and Deep Colour Off = 4:4:4 8-bit. If Deep Colour is on either of the Auto settings, it goes 4:4:4 12-bit.

The main reason I started testing is because again I started noticing banding or posterization in dark and low lit scenes on my A9G (never in colors, only blacks). Don't know how to explain it, but it's been bugging me. This was with SDR content watching Underwater via blu-ray. I saw all the videos about the flashing and near black issues with chroma overshoot, but it just looks different issue. Even when I can't see the "bands" it looks like it moves dynamically. I was thinking it may have something contributing to it from the player...

but after testing these variances out, I didn't notice any difference. So I'll just leave everything on Auto again and let it do 4:4:4/12bit.

I know it's just the TV then...it does help bringing Gamma back to 0 (2.2) and black level at 50 (I dropped it to 49 to combat the flashing). As much as I love this TV 99.99999% of the time, this issue that pops up

[Geoff D]

For all the noise made about "perfect black" and "infinite contrast" OLED has had historical problems with near black content, not just the chroma overshoot that has reared its head in recent years but a lack of dithering in those near-black or low-luminance regions which can result in posterisation. If you're getting it with SDR specifically then it may be that the processing just isn't handling the 8-bit depth very well in those darker regions. Have you tried turning on Smooth Gradation?

[edit] OR Underwater is just poorly encoded anyway, the quality of regular BD from the majors is starting to go downhill.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

For all the noise made about "perfect black" and "infinite contrast" OLED has had historical problems with near black content, not just the chroma overshoot that has reared its head in recent years but a lack of dithering in those near-black or low-luminance regions which can result in posterisation. If you're getting it with SDR specifically then it may be that the processing just isn't handling the 8-bit depth very well in those darker regions. Have you tried turning on Smooth Gradation?

[edit] OR Underwater is just poorly encoded anyway, the quality of regular BD from the majors is starting to go downhill.

It's mostly SDR, yes. Master and Commander was another bad one, but I understand that is an older disc. I do use Smooth Gradation on Low and it does help, every so slightly. It makes it look smoother (clever name) but there's still a yuckiness there.

I've seen it on a couple rare UHD's as well, Spectre being the most recent. On these occasions, it's more of a blob as opposed to posterized noise. Towards the climax when he's rushing around to save the girl in the building about to explode, there's a few shots where the corners/edges of the screen look like they're moving and too dark (not like a small subtle vignette effect). More like the TV struggles and shows black blobs (at least it's not posterized). Same thing during the boat escape and the inside helicopter shots.

[peterraes]

It does seems that the panny 820 can do 4K HEVC from a HDD but cant output lossless audio DTS master...Dolby true HD over the rear USB 3.
Has annyone tried to do this BUT have a optical cable attached wich is ofc not lossless and limited to 1.5mb?
As it is then not outputting lossless....will you get audio?
I have a Oppo 203 wich can do this spotless ,but since Oppo is out of the game...
I want to buy another player for the future and the Panny seems a really good thing

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

For all the noise made about "perfect black" and "infinite contrast" OLED has had historical problems with near black content, not just the chroma overshoot that has reared its head in recent years but a lack of dithering in those near-black or low-luminance regions which can result in posterisation. If you're getting it with SDR specifically then it may be that the processing just isn't handling the 8-bit depth very well in those darker regions. Have you tried turning on Smooth Gradation?

[edit] OR Underwater is just poorly encoded anyway, the quality of regular BD from the majors is starting to go downhill.

This isn't a problem with OLED itself, or other brands OLED TVs, but specifically with LG picture processing.

As an LG OLED owner, my experience with posterisation is that it only happens when the source has a low bit rate for whatever resolution that source is.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

This isn't a problem with OLED itself, or other brands OLED TVs, but specifically with LG picture processing.

As an LG OLED owner, my experience with posterisation is that it only happens when the source has a low bit rate for whatever resolution that source is.

And yet other brands have documented issues with chroma overshoot too, Sony in particular despite their highly regarded processing. And Panasonic introduced incredibly granular controls into their white balance/CMS on their OLEDs, like down to 0.5 IRE increments I think, in order to let people tweak that near-black response to their taste and to try and minimise overshoot/banding issues in such content. But even then, their ultimate solution to the issue might just be the old trick of making those bits darker to crush out the offending information, e.g. https://www.t3.com/us/reviews/panaso...view-best-oled

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

This isn't a problem with OLED itself, or other brands OLED TVs, but specifically with LG picture processing.

As an LG OLED owner, my experience with posterisation is that it only happens when the source has a low bit rate for whatever resolution that source is.

I actually have a Sony A9G. Don't get me wrong, 99.99% of the time it's great and I love it, and most issues are on "lower" quality content (SDR Blu-ray). Even then, it's not as prevalent as I make it seem, just when it does it irks me and makes me wonder exactly if it's TV or source or player etc. Basically all UHD content are great and perfect black except for rare scenes like I described with Spectre.

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by peterraes

It does seems that the panny 820 can do 4K HEVC from a HDD but cant output lossless audio DTS master...Dolby true HD over the rear USB 3.
Has annyone tried to do this BUT have a optical cable attached wich is ofc not lossless and limited to 1.5mb?
As it is then not outputting lossless....will you get audio?
I have a Oppo 203 wich can do this spotless ,but since Oppo is out of the game...
I want to buy another player for the future and the Panny seems a really good thing

The Pana just don’t do anything beyond core codecs. Outside of that you won’t get any sound. I’m annoyed about this too.

[dcx4610]

For those looking for a better remote, the N2QAYA000131 is dirt cheap now on eBay. I got mine for $10.

It's missing the HDR setting button (which I don't use anyway) but has the benefit of being larger, has light up buttons and better button placement.

If you want to program the TV button to control your power or volume, here are the codes. Press and hold the TV power on the remote, input one of the codes and then press power again to see if it turns your TV on:

Panasonic: 01/02
LG: 10/11
SAMSUNG: 20/21/22
SONY: 30
VIZIO: 40/41

These will work with the stock remote and the UB900 remote listed above.