Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[SolidBlu]

Originally Posted by Waboman

Yeah, I wiped it and turned the player on/off. Still didn’t work. 2020 strikes again.

Could be faulty disc

[dcforsyth]

Yep, I got a defective one The photos show what happened playing Toy Story.

What sucks, is I bought it from Best Buy and they won't have any more in stock until 12/20.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by pbz06

But make sure to test out and see for yourself. You might simply prefer another setting like others who have found better results with other methods

Yes, I agree with pbz06, test out/ change the settings of the player and turning "On" and "Off" the DTM to see what you like best. I've done a lot of experimenting with my LG C9 as well. For me, I have the DTM Turned 'On" and the 820's Optimizer "On" as well and set to Super High Luminance (1,500 nits). I like the overall picture. Now mind you, my set is calibrated so it may be different from your experiences. Either way, test it all out and see what seems best to you. And after that, have a blast watching movies!

[Waboman]

Originally Posted by R3P0

Sorry man was hoping against hope for you. But if it makes you feel better I can post compromised pictures of the movie as I am playing it in my machine to your PM box so you can see me enjoying it

Lol. Yeah, someone might as well enjoy it.

Thinking I’ll throw in the TE edition (since that works) of Fellowship and see how she looks in person. No more screens caps.

Originally Posted by SolidBlu

Could be faulty disc

More than likely. Fortunately submitting an exchange with Amazon is painless. Unfortunately my exchanged copy won’t arrive until Jan. 9th!

[sridharjanani]

Hello All,

Please help me with my query.

I upgraded recently my blu-ray player from Oppo 103D to Panasonic UB9000 and just realized the manual says subtitle support is only for MKV? I have a lot of MP4 files with external subtitles attached to USB hard drive which work fine with OPPO and doesn't seem to work in Panasonic? Is there a way to fix this or I need to have all video files converted to MKV for subtitles to work. Could the experts advise please.

Thanks.

[James Luckard]

I just bought this machine, my first 4K UHD player.

Does anyone know how to turn off the motion smoothing that seems to be inherent in the player, or if it's even possible?

It's not appearing on every disc. I had bought a number of titles with both BD and UHD over the last couple of years, preparing to upgrade.

Also, it's very important to note, I don't have the UHD TV set up yet, that'll be tomorrow, I'm feeding the UHD player into my 1080p HD TV tonight, just to test if any motion smoothing is coming from the player itself.

When I tried Hook on UHD disc, it looked perfectly normal.

When I tried The Post, there was definitely slight motion smoothing/soap opera effect.

I think I see it on Jurassic Park too, but it's fairly slight, it's not like the normal "Hobbit-like" motion smoothing that looks truly atrocious, this is like 1/2 or 1/4 of that level of smoothing, just enough to be annoying.

I don't think I noticed it on War of the Worlds, but I can't be sure.

I'm absolutely terrified, because I went to a friend's house about six months ago and watched my first UHD disc on a UHD TV, Black Hawk Down, and there was similarly slight motion smoothing that we could not turn off, no matter what settings we tried on the TV or the player.

I can't find much discussion of motion smoothing on the forum, especially related to players or discs instead of TVs. Can anyone help?

Since the feed is going into a regular TV, which has worked fine for ten years, the motion smoothing must be coming from the player or the disc, right?

Can anyone help? I'm sick with fear that a huge portion of UHDs have unremovable motion smoothing baked into them.

Thanks!!

[James Luckard]

The only post I found that seemed in any way relevant was this one, about another player:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=324162

where people thought it might be Dobly Vision on the discs that caused this.

Or is it possible the issue here is with my TV, even though it has never had motion smoothing issues before?

[James Luckard]

I think I figured it out, thanks to Aunt Peg's post here:

Originally Posted by Aunt Peg

Just an update on this which may be of interest to some people.

I adjusted my TV when I first purchased a Blu Ray player back in 2009 because I noticed how odd everything looked and the jelly like appearance that occurred at times when there was lot of movement on the screen. Through my internet searches at the time I discovered that this was called the 'soap opera effect'.

Given that this is only happening with one player (my mothers former Region A player that she rarely used) and not my Region B locked player, I decided to check the settings on the Blu Ray players.

One of my searches recommended to do this with Blu Ray players:

1. Press home on the remote
2. Select Set Up
3. Select Output Video resolution in the Screen Settings Category
4. Select auto

Both my players as well as the two in the lounge room are all set up this way.

So I took a chance and went into one of the settings on the Blu Ray player (I've forgotten which one) but it had 4 options:

1) BD-Rom 24p Output
2) DVD Room 24p Output
3) Data (sorry can't read the rest of my writing here)
4) Network output 24p Output

They were set to:

1) Auto
2) Off
3) Auto
4) Off

If changed no. 1 to off and presto any Blu Ray I placed in the machine showed correctly on my TV (i.e. not video like and no jelly-like look around motion scenes).

So I suppose if people are having problems with 'soap opera effect' checking TV settings should always be the first option. But if they are persisting it is possible that the Blu Ray settings could be having an effect as well which is what has turned out to be the case in this situation involving just one machine.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I went into Player Settings and switched:

24p Output from

Auto to

Off

and it made the motion smoothing go away.

I'm so glad I tried this tonight, without the new UHD TV as an element, so I knew for certain that it was the player causing the motion smoothing.

And I'm so grateful to have all the people here who help each other out! I love this forum!!!!!!

[teddyballgame]

Originally Posted by Jabbatheblack

So, I’ve been experimenting with the Dynamic Tone Mapping setting on my C9, and I noticed that the picture seems to become brighter when turning it on, and become dimmer when turning it off, and I wanted to ask, what would you guys recommend leaving it on? I’m asking this here because I also have the 820 with the optimizer on pretty much all of the time, and with the player set to OLED.

I also have the c9 and have tried to compare the various picture settings using a spears and munsil benchmark disc. I feel that the DTM function tends to push the image unnaturally for a brighter more contrasted look and whether or not you can "get away with it" comes down to the source material. The spears and munsil demo montage is truly immaculate and much more forgiving when you ask it to be so bold. Actual UHD movie content rarely reaches this level of quality though, and so, more often than not I turn it off on film-based transfers which I consider more delicate to manipulation.

[dspin]

Originally Posted by KorokoDelToro

Excuse me for asking a question that may have already been addressed in this 331 page thread, but if I have an 820 with my LG C9, should I be setting the panel type to OLED or something else? I've noticed a lot of discussion here about that but have been unable to determine a clear conclusion, so any advice would be super!

I have a Sony A9G w/the 9000. I tried the OLED display type with HDR and Dolby Vision movies. I did not care for it. I use the LCD low setting and it looks great/much better to my eyes. I do use the HDR settings and optimizer when applicable, though optimizer not all the time, depends on the movie. Try different things, everyone's eye candy is different

[wxman2003]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I think I figured it out, thanks to Aunt Peg's post here:



I went into Player Settings and switched:

24p Output from

Auto to

Off

and it made the motion smoothing go away.

I'm so glad I tried this tonight, without the new UHD TV as an element, so I knew for certain that it was the player causing the motion smoothing.

And I'm so grateful to have all the people here who help each other out! I love this forum!!!!!!

By doing that you are inducing judder as you are forcing 24hz material to playback as 60hz, creating 3:2 cadence, which produces judder. The problem is not with the player, but your tv. You need to find motion setting on your tv, and turn it off, while leaving 24p on the player set to Auto. On my tv, TruMotion needs to be turned off to eliminate the SOE with 24p material, as I have never seen motion smoothing on the 9000 with 24p set to Auto and TruMotion on my tv set to off.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by wxman2003

By doing that you are inducing judder as you are forcing 24hz material to playback as 60hz, creating 3:2 cadence, which produces judder. The problem is not with the player, but your tv. You need to find motion setting on your tv, and turn it off, while leaving 24p on the player set to Auto. On my tv, TruMotion needs to be turned off to eliminate the SOE with 24p material, as I have never seen motion smoothing on the 9000 with 24p set to Auto and TruMotion on my tv set to off.

I was using my existing Samsung HDTV tonight, before hooking up my new Samsung UHD TV tomorrow. This existing TV, on which I was seeing the motion smoothing, is ten years old. It doesn't even have a motion smoothing setting to turn off that I know of, and I looked in all the settings earlier tonight to double check. It has certainly never had an issue with motion smoothing up till now, when I introduced the UHD disc player into the mix.

If introducing intentional judder recreates the look of the flickering of 24fps, which the inherent motion smoothing in the player seems to erase, then that seems like a livable workaround.

If anyone has a better solution that produces results, however, I'm certainly open to it.

To be clear, what I was seeing before turning that setting off on the UHD player was not the normal MASSIVE motion smoothing that the TV generates, this was a much more subtle motion smoothing, and the intensity varied on different UHD discs I tried out tonight, as detailed in my posts above.

This minimal motion smoothing still rendered the discs unwatchable to me though, because I'm extraordinarily sensitive to motion smoothing.

[PUsokrJosh305]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I was using my existing Samsung HDTV tonight, before hooking up my new Samsung UHD TV tomorrow. This existing TV, on which I was seeing the motion smoothing, is ten years old. It doesn't even have a motion smoothing setting to turn off that I know of, and I looked in all the settings earlier tonight to double check. It has certainly never had an issue with motion smoothing up till now, when I introduced the UHD disc player into the mix.

If introducing intentional judder recreates the look of the flickering of 24fps, which the inherent motion smoothing in the player seems to erase, then that seems like a livable workaround.

If anyone has a better solution that produces results, however, I'm certainly open to it.

To be clear, what I was seeing before turning that setting off on the UHD player was not the normal MASSIVE motion smoothing that the TV generates, this was a much more subtle motion smoothing, and the intensity varied on different UHD discs I tried out tonight, as detailed in my posts above.

This minimal motion smoothing still rendered the discs unwatchable to me though, because I'm extraordinarily sensitive to motion smoothing.

It's quite possible that your TV does in fact has it's own motion smoothing setting. I know my old 2011 Samsung 1080p 120 Hz TV does. It's called "Auto Motion" or 'Auto Motion Plus." It basically adds frames to the picture and with 24 fps films, it really creates the soap opera effect. I would check that and see if it's "On" or set at a high setting. I know for my Samsung TV (Which I still have), I only use Auto Motion for sports and keep it at the "Clear" setting.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

It's quite possible that your TV does in fact has it's own motion smoothing setting. I know my old 2011 Samsung 1080p 120 Hz TV does. It's called "Auto Motion" or 'Auto Motion Plus." It basically adds frames to the picture and with 24 fps films, it really creates the soap opera effect. I would check that and see if it's "On" or set at a high setting. I know for my Samsung TV (Which I still have), I only use Auto Motion for sports and keep it at the "Clear" setting.

I checked the settings, there's nothing like that. I don't think my old HDTV is capable of producing that. I seem to remember I intentionally bought a TV that had no motion smoothing option. The sticker on the back says it's a Series 5 LN40C530 AC100-240V - 50/60Hz 190W. If I remember right, there was a 120Hz version of that TV also available, which could produce motion smoothing, and I purposely didn't buy it.

I've never had motion smoothing issues on this TV in ten years of use, playing both BDs and DVDs on both a Panasonic BD player and an Orei regionless BD player.

However, as soon as I started using the Panasonic UHD player tonight, the motion smoothing appeared, only on UHD discs, not BDs, I tried the BD of The Post and it looked normal, but the UHD of The Post had noticeable motion smoothing.

As posted above, the degree of motion smoothing varied. It was bad on The Post, moderate on Jurassic Park, minimal on War of the Worlds and nonexistent on Hook.

Once I changed the setting on the UHD player recommended by Aunt Peg, the motion smoothing went away on all those discs and they looked normal.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I was using my existing Samsung HDTV tonight, before hooking up my new Samsung UHD TV tomorrow. This existing TV, on which I was seeing the motion smoothing, is ten years old. It doesn't even have a motion smoothing setting to turn off that I know of, and I looked in all the settings earlier tonight to double check. It has certainly never had an issue with motion smoothing up till now, when I introduced the UHD disc player into the mix.

If introducing intentional judder recreates the look of the flickering of 24fps, which the inherent motion smoothing in the player seems to erase, then that seems like a livable workaround.

If anyone has a better solution that produces results, however, I'm certainly open to it.

To be clear, what I was seeing before turning that setting off on the UHD player was not the normal MASSIVE motion smoothing that the TV generates, this was a much more subtle motion smoothing, and the intensity varied on different UHD discs I tried out tonight, as detailed in my posts above.

This minimal motion smoothing still rendered the discs unwatchable to me though, because I'm extraordinarily sensitive to motion smoothing.

How did you have your prior player(s) set up? Did they have the 24p output turned off as well? I'm surprised you never noticed it before if they were set to 24p. As said above, you're actually adding judder to the output if you turn it off because the player is converting 24p to 60p using 3:2 pulldown.

Okay, so how comes it looks better than 24p with no 'soap opera effect' to your eyes? Because not all TVs play 24p *at* 24p or a multiple thereof, e.g. if their refresh rate is 60Hz then they have to adjust the 24p to make it 'fit' and, Samsung being Samsung, they prolly didn't use regular 3:2 pulldown but some daft in-house processing when provided a 24p signal. So when you turned it off the player is now outputting a rate that best matches the 60Hz display, hence the lack of overt SOE. And the same applies to your buddy's TV too, it's not the first time I've come across this phenom.

I tell you what though, if you've been viewing 60Hz stuff for years and years and years then it's gonna be interesting to see how you react to watching 24p on a display that can do it properly. You mentioned before that you avoided the 120Hz TV but the irony is that that one may have been MORE suited for proper 24p cadence because 120 is a multiple of 24. Not that I'm talking about Motionflow, but just how the TV makes 24 'fit' into its native 120 rate by cleanly repeating each frame five times. That may sound like a lot of repeated frames but as these are sample and hold displays anyway then there's no obvious added lag, and you're already watching 24 converted into 60 with no ill effect.

[punisher]

Originally Posted by sridharjanani

Hello All,

Please help me with my query.

I upgraded recently my blu-ray player from Oppo 103D to Panasonic UB9000 and just realized the manual says subtitle support is only for MKV? I have a lot of MP4 files with external subtitles attached to USB hard drive which work fine with OPPO and doesn't seem to work in Panasonic? Is there a way to fix this or I need to have all video files converted to MKV for subtitles to work. Could the experts advise please.

Thanks.

The Panny players cannot do what the OPPO players can when playing back video files. I added and then quickly returned an 820 player. My OPPO 203 is still the best when it comes to play back of ripped files and backups of movies.
However, the LG UBK90 and the Walmart version of the same player UBKM9 can play back everything I have thrown at it. No problems with any subtitles or soundtracks either. For 200 bucks or less these players are the only ones that will work for you. The Panasonic is a great disc player but if you want to use it for than that, save the bucks and grab one of the little LGs

[pbz06]

Just to be clear, there is zero and no inherent soap opera effect with the player. It properly sends 24p content as is. Any observation otherwise is a setting with the TV.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

How did you have your prior player(s) set up? Did they have the 24p output turned off as well? I'm surprised you never noticed it before if they were set to 24p. As said above, you're actually adding judder to the output if you turn it off because the player is converting 24p to 60p using 3:2 pulldown.

Okay, so how comes it looks better than 24p with no 'soap opera effect' to your eyes? Because not all TVs play 24p *at* 24p or a multiple thereof, e.g. if their refresh rate is 60Hz then they have to adjust the 24p to make it 'fit' and, Samsung being Samsung, they prolly didn't use regular 3:2 pulldown but some daft in-house processing when provided a 24p signal. So when you turned it off the player is now outputting a rate that best matches the 60Hz display, hence the lack of overt SOE. And the same applies to your buddy's TV too, it's not the first time I've come across this phenom.

I tell you what though, if you've been viewing 60Hz stuff for years and years and years then it's gonna be interesting to see how you react to watching 24p on a display that can do it properly. You mentioned before that you avoided the 120Hz TV but the irony is that that one may have been MORE suited for proper 24p cadence because 120 is a multiple of 24. Not that I'm talking about Motionflow, but just how the TV makes 24 'fit' into its native 120 rate by cleanly repeating each frame five times. That may sound like a lot of repeated frames but as these are sample and hold displays anyway then there's no obvious added lag, and you're already watching 24 converted into 60 with no ill effect.

I never once had "soap opera effect" with BDs or DVDs on my old setup. I've noticed it at other people's homes a few times on BDs where their TVs had motion smoothing, but as I mentioned, my TV didn't have it.

However, when I first saw a UHD player playing a UHD disc (Black Hawk Down) onto a UHD TV, about six months ago, this slight SOE was there, we couldn't turn it off, even after we shut off every motion smoothing setting in the TV.

Then, last week, I bought a dirt cheap Panasonic UHD player by accident, the Panasonic DP-UB150EB, for $100. I hooked it up to my HDTV and there was slight SOE as the UHD player played a UHD of It's a Wonderful Life.

I returned that machine, because it was junk and had no separate audio output, and replaced it with this machine.

When I hooked up this machine last night, there was SOE as well on UHD discs - but it varied a lot from disc to disc. The Post had it pretty badly, Jurassic Park had it mildly, War of the Worlds had it minimally, Hook didn't have it at all.

Also, to be clear, I played the BDs of those titles, and they did not have it, it was only the UHDs that had it.

I looked carefully for any motion smoothing settings on the TV, but there aren't any that I can find.

I was afraid UHD was just inherently going to look like this, until I tried Aunt Peg's trick, which seemed to make it go away.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Just to be clear, there is zero and no inherent soap opera effect with the player. It properly sends 24p content as is. Any observation otherwise is a setting with the TV.

I understand that this is the accepted wisdom, but I can find no motion smoothing settings within my TV. If anyone can point me to some hidden motion smoothing setting in my TV, that would be super helpful, but how would it only impact video signals from UHDs and not BDs?

[wxman2003]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I understand that this is the accepted wisdom, but I can find no motion smoothing settings within my TV. If anyone can point me to some hidden motion smoothing setting in my TV, that would be super helpful, but how would it only impact video signals from UHDs and not BDs?

Perhaps there is an issue with the Panny converting HDR2020 to SDR709 at 24p that your tv can not handle properly. Most of us don't have the player convert HDR2020 to SDR709, unless they have a projector.

My bet, when you hook it up to you new 4K tv, you won't have any issue with 24p being sent to the tv, from the Panny.