Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Cortiz]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yeah, not to be Contrary Clive but of my three UHD players the 820 has been the most reliable with read-related issues (the DV problems were a different story and intrinsic to both the 820 and 9000 before the latest firmware update). Not that they all had problems and the 820 is the least of those, I mean it's been virtually flawless for read errors while the OPPO gave me a fair bit of grief on triple layer discs before I had the drive swapped out and the Sony X800 has been a little flaky, glitching up during Rear Window.

Not surprised that the 9000 has been so solid for you, but for a thousand clams it'd better be!

Curious to know which one you prefer for OVERAll PQ?

[Naiera]

One thing I'll add about the 824 is that I'm disappointed that it plays files off the USB inputs in 60Hz. Seriously, Panasonic? As with the Sony X800m2, the local network options seem useless and absolutely nothing about how to use them seem to be described in the manuals.

I'm obviously keeping my region free Oppo BDP-103 for Blu-rays, but regarding the 9000 DVD playback discussion, I do think it's odd for such an incredibly expensive player to to DVDs so poorly. I doubt I'll ever watch another DVD, so I don't care, but it's odd. My DAC costs twice as much as the 9000, so I have no use for the fancy audio bits either Using two disc players isn't ideal, but I think it's what must be in my setup.

[blupetros]

@CORTIZ To paraphrase Geoff one page back...

Originally Posted by Geoff D

..... and I’ve got the X800, Panny 820 and OPPO 203. Can I tell an actual difference between all three playing HD or UHD content? Can I bollocks.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Naiera

One thing I'll add about the 824 is that I'm disappointed that it plays files off the USB inputs in 60Hz. Seriously, Panasonic? As with the Sony X800m2, the local network options seem useless and absolutely nothing about how to use them seem to be described in the manuals.

I'm obviously keeping my region free Oppo BDP-103 for Blu-rays, but regarding the 9000 DVD playback discussion, I do think it's odd for such an incredibly expensive player to to DVDs so poorly. I doubt I'll ever watch another DVD, so I don't care, but it's odd. My DAC costs twice as much as the 9000, so I have no use for the fancy audio bits either Using two disc players isn't ideal, but I think it's what must be in my setup.

Whenever I play a DVD, I always set the output resolution to 480p so my display can do the upscaling.

[grahams76]

So I've had the UB820 for a week now. User interface can be a little clunky but otherwise thoroughly pleased with my purchase.

I have a couple of questions / niggles though:

• Am I correct that the only way to select subtitles is to go into the options menu? There's no subtitle button equivalent of the audio button. This is disappointing.
  
• Similarly, do you have to go into the Home menu (so completely stopping the disc) to fiddle with the audio sync? I watched Heaven Can Wait last night and the AV sync was off so had to go in three times to finally work out how much millisecond delay was needed.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Whenever I play a DVD, I always set the output resolution to 480p so my display can do the upscaling.

The upscaling is not the issue, it's the internal deinterlacing of the Panny players which is awful. Note that you cannot output it as a 'source direct' 480i image which would bypass this deinterlacing, so even at 480p you're stuck with it.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The upscaling is not the issue, it's the internal deinterlacing of the Panny players which is awful. Note that you cannot output it as a 'source direct' 480i image which would bypass this deinterlacing, so even at 480p you're stuck with it.

Did the OPPO machine output 480i?

Also, my DVDs look great on the Panasonic with my display. It brings even personal DVDs to near HD quality.

[Geoff D]

OPPO has untouched 480i output, yes. And it murders the Panny for DVD playback.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Unfortunately there are no guarantees that x future display will have decent tone mapping so it’s handy to have the Optimiser as a backup, but at the same time it’s a crude tool that gets very little usage from me (and that usage gets less and less whenever Sony reissue an older Light Cannon™️ title with DV). It’d be awesome if Panny updated the Optimiser to have more granular control over the nits output rather than 500-nit steps, as well as eliminate the throttling of bit depth that causes mild banding when using it.

Considering all the hoops folks are going through to optimize their gaming either with consoles or PCs it's frustrating that we're not given more control. But all of this should have been there from the start, discs should say their values on the back of the wrap and we should have the option to choose what our displays show and ignore.

Yes, give folks presets and auto settings, but let the tech savvy have more control.

[Geoff D]

Agreed 100%. HDR was NEVER going to be a ‘plug and play’ system so they really should’ve paid way more attention to the tone mapping side of things instead of letting each manufacturer have their own ‘black box’ that does its own thing. Yes, some people would argue that the last thing we needed on TVs was more settings but come on, there are literally hundreds of things that can be adjusted now so having a custom tone mapper would’ve just been one more.

A cynic would maintain that Dobly letting everyone have HDR10 for free is what created this havoc, designed entirely to plan so that their own paywalled version of dynamic HDR would end up being the default because of how badly HDR10 ended up being implemented.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Agreed 100%. HDR was NEVER going to be a ‘plug and play’ system so they really should’ve paid way more attention to the tone mapping side of things instead of letting each manufacturer have their own ‘black box’ that does its own thing. Yes, some people would argue that the last thing we needed on TVs was more settings but come on, there are literally hundreds of things that can be adjusted now so having a custom tone mapper would’ve just been one more.

A cynic would maintain that Dobly letting everyone have HDR10 for free is what created this havoc, designed entirely to plan so that their own paywalled version of dynamic HDR would end up being the default because of how badly HDR10 ended up being implemented.

Even DV is still a mess. Lots of issues with flickering, lit up black bars, different profiles, some shows are brighter in DV Dark than DV Bright (lol), on and on. Even with Sony, the DV engine offsets from the default white point to aim for D65 but most people don't know that and when they calibrate to D65, their DV is crappier etc.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Even DV is still a mess. Lots of issues with flickering, lit up black bars, different profiles, some shows are brighter in DV Dark than DV Bright (lol), on and on. Even with Sony, the DV engine offsets from the default white point to aim for D65 but most people don't know that and when they calibrate to D65, their DV is crappier etc.

No argument with any of that (I’ve had to recalibrate the DV white point as you say though this is the first I’ve actually heard of it, I just thought it was a quirk of the ZD9), but it’s STILL less messed up than letting HDR10 loose without any kind of user tweakability in the display.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

No argument with any of that (I’ve had to recalibrate the DV white point as you say though this is the first I’ve actually heard of it, I just thought it was a quirk of the ZD9), but it’s STILL less messed up than letting HDR10 loose without any kind of user tweakability in the display.

I wasn't too into calibration when I had the Z9D, so I can't say how it works on it and I don't own it anymore.

But now that I have my spectro and meter and stuff, I can confirm that on their OLEDs and recent LEDs that Sony uses an alternate white point (X=0.3067, y=0.3180) out of the box. It's necessary for OLED due to metamerism and the need to perceptual match to a D65 monitor, but they also use it on LCD because they think it looks better.

But anyway, rambling aside, yes with Sony since you calibrate the SDR and rely on its math to HDR10 and DV, seems that HDR10 is fine using whatever white point you calibrate to, but DV expects its default settings so changes to the color and greyscale would throw it off.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

I wasn't too into calibration when I had the Z9D, so I can't say how it works on it and I don't own it anymore.

But now that I have my spectro and meter and stuff, I can confirm that on their OLEDs and recent LEDs that Sony uses an alternate white point (X=0.3067, y=0.3180) out of the box. It's necessary for OLED due to metamerism and the need to perceptual match to a D65 monitor, but they also use it on LCD because they think it looks better.

But anyway, rambling aside, yes with Sony since you calibrate the SDR and rely on its math to HDR10 and DV, seems that HDR10 is fine using whatever white point you calibrate to, but DV expects its default settings so changes to the color and greyscale would throw it off.

Alls I can say is...I noticed a while ago with my own eyeses that the white balance of DV looked slightly greenier/yellower than my calibrated (yes, spectro and meter and stuff) SDR and HDR10 modes (which do of coursh share the same white balance settings on Sony TVs) when using the same WB settings for DV. Maybe they has been doing this for a while?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Alls I can say is...I noticed a while ago with my own eyeses that the white balance of DV looked slightly greenier/yellower than my calibrated (yes, spectro and meter and stuff) SDR and HDR10 modes (which do of coursh share the same white balance settings on Sony TVs) when using the same WB settings for DV. Maybe they has been doing this for a while?

It appears so, and would explain your findings.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by grahams76

Am I correct that the only way to select subtitles is to go into the options menu? There's no subtitle button equivalent of the audio button. This is disappointing.

Agreed. Rather annoying. I find that using the disc's own menu is much faster, which is something I never do on my Oppo 103, unless I want to make sure I have the non-SDH subtitles.

[DAT_JB]

Originally Posted by pbz06

I wasn't too into calibration when I had the Z9D, so I can't say how it works on it and I don't own it anymore.

But now that I have my spectro and meter and stuff, I can confirm that on their OLEDs and recent LEDs that Sony uses an alternate white point (X=0.3067, y=0.3180) out of the box. It's necessary for OLED due to metamerism and the need to perceptual match to a D65 monitor, but they also use it on LCD because they think it looks better.

But anyway, rambling aside, yes with Sony since you calibrate the SDR and rely on its math to HDR10 and DV, seems that HDR10 is fine using whatever white point you calibrate to, but DV expects its default settings so changes to the color and greyscale would throw it off.

Yeah Sony and DV is not the best match. Far fewer problems with DV and LG from my experience.

[rickardl]

Originally Posted by grahams76

Am I correct that the only way to select subtitles is to go into the options menu? There's no subtitle button equivalent of the audio button. This is disappointing.

In the Logitech database for the player, there is a discrete code available to bring up the subtitle page which I have mapped to one of my touch screen buttons on my Harmony one.

[Naiera]

I figured that was possible

[mkozlows]

So tried to play a legacy Blu-ray tonight, and -- despite the disc looking totally fine -- the Panasonic refused to play it. (It started giving artifacts on the "piracy is totally cool and fun lol" warning screen, and then froze entirely on the main menu)

I figured it must be a bad disc, but then the Xbox Series X played it with no hiccups.

Do I just straight-up have a defective player, or is it normal to have some titles that are just weirdly flaky like that? (The movie was Network, if it matters.)