Sony UBP-X700 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Auditor55]

Originally Posted by MOS3

Hey guys, quick question. I have an xbox one s that I purchased just so I could have a 4k player (at the time it was the only 4k player in my country) and while I think it works fine most of the time, it's always had some audio sync issues...sometimes it fixes just by rewinding or fast forwarding a bit and if that's just not working, restarting the console might do it. Now I saw this player available in a store and I'm considering getting it. What do you guys think? Is it better to get this, a dedicated player or stick with the xbox one s? do dedicated player get audio sync issues too?

thanks a lot!

The Xbox One S doesn't do DV via the Blu Ray drive and doesn't look like MS is going make that update since they seem to be going into direction of eliminating optical drives from their consoles. Also, the Xbox One S when it does DV through the Netflix app forces DV on even non-DV mastered content. In my opinion, those issues alone should make you consider purchasing the Sony player. However, the Sony player doesn't Auto detect DV which a major fail.

[rroeder]

Originally Posted by Voltaire53

You *should* turn it off; obviously if you can't see any difference it's not a big deal but there is one as the TV will be treating/decoding the HDR10/HDR10+ as DV which is incorrect and will give a incorrectly decoded image...

If you leave it on I think the player is sending the right signal based off the disc tho, yes your TV goes into DV mode but if you have your TV setup the same for both formats(DV and HDR10) then it doesn't make any difference right? Obviously this does not apply to SDR

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the TV isn't doing anything special in DV mode, just different picture mode with diff settings right?

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by Voltaire53

I must be lucky; the majority of discs I play are DVD (lots of TV, especially classic stuff, isn't even available in BD especially in the UK) and I've never had a lock up like that; maybe the occasional disc clean required but that's it - just like with all discs - and 4:3 (all my classic TV) plays without any image glitches.
As an aside, and despite criticisms I've seen here, I find with a decently authored DVDs, especially recent material, the upscaling by the player to 4K (though people say leave it to the TV, I found this player semed to give a better image) is pushing DVD *towards* Blu-ray quality in some cases (though obviously still *recognisable* as SD).

As far as upscaling goes, it depends on the quality of the Tv’s upscaler. I see you use a Panasonic TV, I use one too for my living room, in your case and mine, I don’t let the TV do the upscaling, I use the player to so the upscale.

[Voltaire53]

Originally Posted by rroeder

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the TV isn't doing anything special in DV mode, just different picture mode with diff settings right?

AIUI Dolby Vision is looking for 12 bits to decode, so if your TV is *told* the image is DV (ie. in DVd mode) it will try to decode 12 bits. If there are only 10 bits how it will 'guess' at the missing 2 surely will be unpredictable and therefore it will not decode the 10 bits the same way HDR10 mode would...

... I'm sure someone more tech-savvy can go further (or tell me I'm wrong!)

[rroeder]

You might be right, I'm not very tech savvy either just know what my system does and what I see

[Matt89]

I find that if I leave DV on while watching a disc that's HDR10 or HDR10+, it just makes the image SUPER dark and there's black crush everywhere. I noticed this when I started watching the 4K of Alien, it was so dark I was like wtf is going on and then noticed I had left the DV setting on and once I switched it off, the bright parts of the image were much brighter and the black levels looked more balanced (it wasn't just black crush all over the place).

I've learned to make sure DV is switched off unless I'm playing a disc that's DV-encoded. Otherwise it's blackcrush.com.

~Matt

[Rodney-2187]

I've read all through this thread and various other articles and after testing out various setting, this is what I have my X700 set to:

I leave Dolby Vision turned on at all times, unless I am watching a disc that only has HDR10. For everything I use this player for, all types of streaming apps regardless if it is in HDR or not, it always look better, or doesn't seem to matter at all if it is left on. A disc without Dolby Vision and with HDR10 is the only time it looks noticeably worse if left on.

4K upscaling is set to Auto 1. I can't tell the difference, but I read most TVs do a better job of upscaling than this player on the Auto 2 setting.

I've read so much debate about 48kHz/96kHz/192kHz that I just set mine to 96 (the middle) and went with that. I feel it is a discernible improvement over the default 48, but that could be some sort of confirmation bias.

I set the Downmix to Surround.

Still trying to figure out more info on DTS Neo:6 and the Digital Music Enhancer.

Any critique of these settings or further advice would be welcome. Lots of fun.

I have a 65" M-series Vizio and a 5.1 Vizio soundbar by the way.

[Rodney-2187]

Novice question here, but is there any benefit to connecting the X700 to my soundbar instead of directly to my TV? Right now I have the X700 and my PS4 direct to the TV and the soundbar connected to the ARC HDMI.

[sapiendut]

No difference at all

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by Rodney-2187

I've read all through this thread and various other articles and after testing out various setting, this is what I have my X700 set to:

I leave Dolby Vision turned on at all times, unless I am watching a disc that only has HDR10. For everything I use this player for, all types of streaming apps regardless if it is in HDR or not, it always look better, or doesn't seem to matter at all if it is left on. A disc without Dolby Vision and with HDR10 is the only time it looks noticeably worse if left on.

4K upscaling is set to Auto 1. I can't tell the difference, but I read most TVs do a better job of upscaling than this player on the Auto 2 setting.

I've read so much debate about 48kHz/96kHz/192kHz that I just set mine to 96 (the middle) and went with that. I feel it is a discernible improvement over the default 48, but that could be some sort of confirmation bias.

I set the Downmix to Surround.

Still trying to figure out more info on DTS Neo:6 and the Digital Music Enhancer.

Any critique of these settings or further advice would be welcome. Lots of fun.

I have a 65" M-series Vizio and a 5.1 Vizio soundbar by the way.

When I had the player, I set the Digital Music Enhancer and leave the DTs Neo:6 done by the receiver when I want to.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Voltaire53

AIUI Dolby Vision is looking for 12 bits to decode, so if your TV is *told* the image is DV (ie. in DVd mode) it will try to decode 12 bits. If there are only 10 bits how it will 'guess' at the missing 2 surely will be unpredictable and therefore it will not decode the 10 bits the same way HDR10 mode would...

... I'm sure someone more tech-savvy can go further (or tell me I'm wrong!)

I *think* the content is being upsampled to 12-bit first using the player's DV processing, but order of business aside you're correct: it's having to guess at how to add those extra bits (changing almost 1000 gradations into almost 4000). But then players have been upsampling content to higher bit depths for years now, and most UHD players set to Auto for bit depth will output upsampled 12-bit from 10-bit UHD content and 8-bit BD content anyway, usually with the end user being none the wiser i.e. it's not adding nor detracting from the experience.

And the ironical thing is that some people have reported seeing less banding and artefacting in darker shots, particularly on OLEDs which can have trouble with near black content, using the DV in-player processing to play HDR10 content. This is due to a number of factors, maybe it's just that the Dolby static tone mapper is better than the static tone mapper inside x TV, maybe it's because there's more headroom in the 12-bit DV processing when carrying out the mapping process vs the non-Dolby processing inside x TV (oversampling theory, it's why Sony's top end TVs operate in 14-bit), maybe it's because the DV processing *apparently* operates in ICtCp space so it can carry out adjustments in a cleaner, more HDR-friendly way before outputting it back to YCbCr.

[edit] Though I don't use forced DV personally because the HDR10 mapping on the ZD9 is excellent already (well, if you can call it mapping, it resolves information up to about 1500 nits at optimal settings then starts to clip which is enough for displaying 90% of UHD discs correctly), it operates with 14-bit internal processing anyway as mentioned, and when forcing DV onto HDR10 it seems to clip the output to 1000 nits and also crushes the lower end slightly. This with the OPPO though, the Sony DV players may react differently of course.

Originally Posted by Voltaire53

You *should* turn it off; obviously if you can't see any difference it's not a big deal but there is one as the TV will be treating/decoding the HDR10/HDR10+ as DV which is incorrect and will give a incorrectly decoded image...

Not quite, because DV and HDR10/+ all use the same Perceptual Quantiser EOTF at their core, along with being encoded in 2020 colour space with P3 primaries for storage on UHD disc. So they're a lot more similar than people may think, which is why some folks report better mapping (see above wall of text) using forced DV. But forcing DV and indeed HDR10 on SDR stuff is a big no-no for me, although I've forced HLG on SDR from time to time and because the two are both relative luminance systems then the result can be quite pleasant.

[bosefus17]

Does anyone know which apps on this player support Dolby Vision and Atmos?

I can't find that information anywhere.

[Infernal King]

I have a X700 player and Sony X900F TV, and only turn on Dolby Vision mode for discs that are DV-compatible. What can I say? I don't like to live dangerously.

[Voltaire53]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

[Show spoiler]I *think* the content is being upsampled to 12-bit first using the player's DV processing, but order of business aside you're correct: it's having to guess at how to add those extra bits (changing almost 1000 gradations into almost 4000). But then players have been upsampling content to higher bit depths for years now, and most UHD players set to Auto for bit depth will output upsampled 12-bit from 10-bit UHD content and 8-bit BD content anyway, usually with the end user being none the wiser i.e. it's not adding nor detracting from the experience.

And the ironical thing is that some people have reported seeing less banding and artefacting in darker shots, particularly on OLEDs which can have trouble with near black content, using the DV in-player processing to play HDR10 content. This is due to a number of factors, maybe it's just that the Dolby static tone mapper is better than the static tone mapper inside x TV, maybe it's because there's more headroom in the 12-bit DV processing when carrying out the mapping process vs the non-Dolby processing inside x TV (oversampling theory, it's why Sony's top end TVs operate in 14-bit), maybe it's because the DV processing *apparently* operates in ICtCp space so it can carry out adjustments in a cleaner, more HDR-friendly way before outputting it back to YCbCr.

[edit] Though I don't use forced DV personally because the HDR10 mapping on the ZD9 is excellent already (well, if you can call it mapping, it resolves information up to about 1500 nits at optimal settings then starts to clip which is enough for displaying 90% of UHD discs correctly), it operates with 14-bit internal processing anyway as mentioned, and when forcing DV onto HDR10 it seems to clip the output to 1000 nits and also crushes the lower end slightly. This with the OPPO though, the Sony DV players may react differently of course.

Quote:

Not quite, because DV and HDR10/+ all use the same Perceptual Quantiser EOTF at their core, along with being encoded in 2020 colour space with P3 primaries for storage on UHD disc. So they're a lot more similar than people may think, which is why some folks report better mapping (see above wall of text) using forced DV. But forcing DV and indeed HDR10 on SDR stuff is a big no-no for me, although I've forced HLG on SDR from time to time and because the two are both relative luminance systems then the result can be quite pleasant.

... and of course when I said "someone more tech-savvy then me", I was invoking the spell that calls Geoff

[jimbean]

is this better or worse than the x800?

[sapiendut]

If you want DV and affordable, get this. 800 doesn’t have DV. 800m2 has DV

[Frank@Chicago]

Originally Posted by Rodney-2187

Novice question here, but is there any benefit to connecting the X700 to my soundbar instead of directly to my TV? Right now I have the X700 and my PS4 direct to the TV and the soundbar connected to the ARC HDMI.

I have a decent LG Atmos soundbar and I have to wire this way:

4K Player -> Soundbar -> OLED.

Many TVs can't pass Atmos thru ARC connects, does your soundbar do Atmos?

My other devices (PS4, Xbox) use ARC because they're just passing 5.1 surround.

When it comes to movies, sound is a huge factor. You don't want it degraded.

[Socko]

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but there is a new update

OLD: M43.R.0226
NEW: M43.R.0277

Edit: I noticed in the UK this was out in March. Weird that mine just updated. I am a frequent checker of updates. Last check I did was two weeks ago.

[stvn1974]

Originally Posted by Socko

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but there is a new update

OLD: M43.R.0226
NEW: M43.R.0277

Edit: I noticed in the UK this was out in March. Weird that mine just updated. I am a frequent checker of updates. Last check I did was two weeks ago.

Does it do more harm than good?

[Kylo8791]

For those that have this player has there been any playback feeezing up issues you’ve noticed with 4K films?...going back and forth between this and a LG UBKM9