Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

Hi,

Here's their manual:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/17qk7...efree.pdf/file

And there's me cutting and pasting things from the archive ...

[Jay Mammoth]

Originally Posted by b_scott

uh, thanks. no.

Good call, even without HDR a 4K disc will still look better than a 1080p Blu-ray.

[hansolo]

I had a strange experience few days ago with my UB820. I had mains power switched off in all of my home theater room gear. After a week when I came back from a trip and put everything on again Panny was not working anymore. It tried to start but always got stuck at "Welcome" message and immediately after that the cooling fan hit the max revs permanently. HDMI out was also dead, no picture at all. Also, no normal start sounds from the optical drive. I tried several times to unplug mains cable and restart without success. At least half a dozen times it got stuck at "Welcome". Did some googling and found the "factory defaults hard reset" method. Tried also that several times unplugging/plugging mains in between but no success. I left the player unplugged over night and decided to re-try next day. I had to check from retailer if my warranty was still valid. Yes, it is 2 years standard here. In the end retailer recommended to send the player for repairs before 2 years is full if this never happens again. Well, next day again same behavior. Tried few times. I repeated the "hard reset" method and magically player was back alive. What a relief. I had a very lucky day with electronics then. My Asus router also magically reanimated. A week prior it had experienced suddenly persistent no WAN Internet connection and all four LAN ports dead. Now, working like a new .

*****
Panasonic player hard factory defaults reset

1. Player must be off (in stand-by) ! Some instructions tell player must be on. Apparently that is wrong because then code 08 FIN is absent.
2. Push and hold OK, Yellow and Blue simultaneously on remote >6 secs
3. Text appears on front display.
4. Click right arrow on remote few times until you reach code 08 FIN.
5. Push and hold OK on remote >6 secs.
6. Player will reset and restart.
*****

I have had the Enhanced Firmware 1.69A installed since day 1. No problems like this during the 19 months of service prior this.

Has anybody experienced similar behavior?

[Okiephile]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Projectors and HDR don’t go together. If you can’t afford a Lumagen Radiance Pro or a MadVR, just don’t bother. Stick with regular Blu-ray.

Certainly, a OLED handles hdr better than a projector, but even my inexpensive Benq 3550 the hdr adds to the picture quality compared to my old 2050A. Even at 100 nits vs 1000 nits the colors are more vibrant and the wcg gives better color accuracy. The advantage of a projector over a tv is that you get a more” theater”look vs. a tv program look, imho.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Jay Mammoth

Good call, even without HDR a 4K disc will still look better than a 1080p Blu-ray.

You can’t just remove the HDR from a 4K disc. Even the $5000 solutions aren’t perfect.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Okiephile

Certainly, a OLED handles hdr better than a projector, but even my inexpensive Benq 3550 the hdr adds to the picture quality compared to my old 2050A. Even at 100 nits vs 1000 nits the colors are more vibrant and the wcg gives better color accuracy. The advantage of a projector over a tv is that you get a more” theater”look vs. a tv program look, imho.

You need individual control of the brightness level of every pixel to be able to use HDR properly, IE an OLED screen. A little $1200 peej could never, ever benefit from it.

Neither can mine, of course.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Naiera

You can’t just remove the HDR from a 4K disc. Even the $5000 solutions aren’t perfect.

No, but compared to some of the shit on Blu-ray that's been supplanted by a new transfer that's on UHD only then I'd take an imperfect UHD conversion over nothing at all.

[Okiephile]

Originally Posted by Naiera

You need individual control of the brightness level of every pixel to be able to use HDR properly, IE an OLED screen. A little $1200 peej could never, ever benefit from it.

Neither can mine, of course.

We do agree on the Oppo 103.

[Okiephile]

Originally Posted by Naiera

You need individual control of the brightness level of every pixel to be able to use HDR properly, IE an OLED screen. A little $1200 peej could never, ever benefit from it.

Neither can mine, of course.

I can’t argue technically, but my eyes and brain definitely think it’s better and in the end that’s all that matters.

[Muyfa666]

On the subject that I wa-need a more robust player, is Panasonic DP-UB9000 the only really good choice then?

[Naiera]

Yes.

Unless you want to pay even more for a MAGNETAR.

[Okiephile]

Originally Posted by Naiera

You need individual control of the brightness level of every pixel to be able to use HDR properly, IE an OLED screen. A little $1200 peej could never, ever benefit from it.

Neither can mine, of course.

If you can’t afford a Ferrari, there’s really no reason to have a car at all, it’s really not driving.

[Muyfa666]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Yes.

Unless you want to pay even more for a MAGNETAR.

Thanks. I may look at the Panasonic 9000 then.

[b_scott]

when you say "robust" what are you looking for? I believe the 9000 has few differences other than better internal DAC and XLR outs. Overall, it's the "best of the best" tax that you're paying extra for. if the nicer look is worth $500 to you, go for it.

[Muyfa666]

Originally Posted by b_scott

when you say "robust" what are you looking for? I believe the 9000 has few differences other than better internal DAC and XLR outs. Overall, it's the "best of the best" tax that you're paying extra for. if they nicer look is worth $500 to you, go for it.

True, yes.

With that said, I want a player that even more silent during disc playback than the 820, and I understand the 9000 are very silent.

While money is certainly a thing, my movie setup is very important to me, so it's worth spending a bit.

Also, I'll have no problem selling the 820 as they are a bit hard to come region modded by locally. Where I live, they sell new without region mod for 440 euro, so I'll cover a fair bit of the price for the 9000 on this.

[b_scott]

I have heard the 9000 is more silent. if that's what you need, sounds like you found your player. my 820 is in another room

[Sango]

Originally Posted by Muyfa666

True, yes.

With that said, I want a player that even more silent during disc playback than the 820, and I understand the 9000 are very silent.

While money is certainly a thing, my movie setup is very important to me, so it's worth spending a bit.

Also, I'll have no problem selling the 820 as they are a bit hard to come region modded by locally. Where I live, they sell new without region mod for 440 euro, so I'll cover a fair bit of the price for the 9000 on this.

Originally Posted by b_scott

I have heard the 9000 is more silent. if that's what you need, sounds like you found your player. my 820 is in another room

I own both 820 and 9000 and can confirm the 9000 is very quiet in all aspects when the player is in operation.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Naiera

Projectors and HDR don’t go together. If you can’t afford a Lumagen Radiance Pro or a MadVR, just don’t bother. Stick with regular Blu-ray.

While I have DTM on my JVC (which performs very close to the Lumagen) and is superior to the Panasonic static mapping, I used the Panny SDR 2020 mode with the Optimizer for quite a while on my former JVC eshift unit. I had a properly calibrated SDR 2020 mode on my JVC with a 2.4 gamma (which the Panasonic outputs for it) and in every case, the UHD BD was superior to the BD counterpart. Sometimes it required the slider to be adjusted accordingly (for more or less brightness), or the tonal white control adjusted, but I never ran into issues with dimness, or something that looked clipped. Proper calibration becomes very important. The UHD image always had more range in the image compared to the BD. My current JVC with DTM is pretty much 'set and forget' except in very, very rare cases. I've been very pleased with UHD BD on my front projectors. I wouldn't give it up for anything.

[Naiera]

My calibration is guaranteed to be more proper than yours. The fact that you had to adjust for every movie proves that it was not a very good setup.

JVC DTM definitely isn't close to Lumagen's though.

But people have different standards of course...

Note that I never said that UHD Blu-ray is bad on front projection. It just requires something most people haven't heard of or would never spend the money on. I did the Panny HDR to SDR conversion thing and it definitely wasn't good enough and nowhere near DTM with a Lumagen Radiance Pro.

Another thing to note is that you weren't doing HDR on a front projection setup. We may disagree on the quality of Panasonic and other's HDR to SDR conversion, but you still kinda proved my point. HDR is impossible to do properly on a front projection setup because of the limitations of the technology. People trying to watch HDR on a front projector are simply doing it wrong, but most people have LCD TVs anyway, which is also garbage

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Naiera

My calibration is guaranteed to be more proper than yours. The fact that you had to adjust for every movie proves that it was not a very good setup.

JVC DTM definitely isn't close to Lumagen's though.

But people have different standards of course...

Note that I never said that UHD Blu-ray is bad on front projection. It just requires something most people haven't heard of or would never spend the money on. I did the Panny HDR to SDR conversion thing and it definitely wasn't good enough and nowhere near DTM with a Lumagen Radiance Pro.

Another thing to note is that you weren't doing HDR on a front projection setup. We may disagree on the quality of Panasonic and other's HDR to SDR conversion, but you still kinda proved my point. HDR is impossible to do properly on a front projection setup because of the limitations of the technology. People trying to watch HDR on a front projector are simply doing it wrong, but most people have LCD TVs anyway, which is also garbage

Ah. Okay, so you want to play the 'my d*ck is bigger than your d*ck' game - sure I'll take out the tape measure!

My set-up was calibrated by Chad B who is widely regarded as one of the very top calibrators in the U.S. He uses a Klein K-10 and Jeti 1211 spectro. That's well over $20K worth of reference calibration equipment. I will also display links to my 709 and 2020 calibration charts; will do you the same?

I know enough and from talking to people who own both that the JVC DTM comes very close to the Lumagen. I've also talked to calibrators and not one has said to buy the Lumagen only for tone mapping if you have a newer JVC with DTM. The Lumagen offers other features (scaling, etc.) if you need them. There is still some outlying scenes and moments where the Lumagen exceeds, and certain set-ups that are nits starved where it offers more benefit. But that is not a problem in my set-up. Also, you don't seem to know the difference between tone mapping and calibration.

Any display or projector not getting the full nits required on disc is technically doing tone mapping. But that's fine, as excellent tone mapping will look very good. Looking at your room images, it's not near dark enough for optimal picture quality with FP. You're probably nit starved.

So, yes, we have different standards. If you're still using that Sony 270, that is a VERY subpar projector with a plastic lens that likely suffers from engine block deterioration. Not very high standards. And quite frankly, probably cannot even hit rec 709. And lucky to hit 3,000:1 native. I'm getting close to 30,000:1 on my NP5. But maybe I am mistaken and you can post you awesomeness calibration charts?

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