Panasonic UB820/UB9000 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[Darbo]

Originally Posted by kevers7290

Add me to list of those whose (UB9000) remote decided to randomly stop working. I was looking at a replacement but Panasonic wants $130?! Can anyone vouch for the cheap, non-OEM replacements? I really don't want to spend $100 for a freakin' remote.

I can vouch for the cheap remote, bought one about a year ago for my 820 and it's been flawless, backlight works great, feels legit in the hand, no problems whatsoever.

[EddieLarkin]

Re Panasonic players cropping 4x3 DVDs, I came across that 10 years ago:

https://criterionforum.org/forum/vie...=450&start=975

David M theorised as to the reason:

It's difficult to say for sure without checking this out for myself, but it could be the case that the players are actually correctly implementing the active picture area as specified in Rec.601 (the ITU spec for digital SD video).

I'll need to read it again and actually research this when I have time, but the DVD resolution of 720x480 / 576 is wider than D1 resolution of 704 pixels across. Some downconverting hardware adds 8 black pixels to the left and right of the 720x480 frame for that reason. Strictly speaking, these are designed not to be shown; some masters have the black pixels "baked in" and some players (perhaps like your Panasonic) do not count these small side-bars as part of the picture. Other players will show this though. But this rule hasn't been strictly enforced which is maybe part of the reason why we're seeing this mismatch. I'd imagine that overscan in the CRT days meant that manufacturers took a "who cares" approach to how to deal with the width of the video.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by EddieLarkin

Re Panasonic players cropping 4x3 DVDs...

Thanks. I noticed the 704 pixels wide on my Panasonic straightaway, but hadn't noticed that the content I was watching was flipping between 720 and 704 pixels wide.

I know I've got some DVDs with junk on the sides, generally a colourful line, I guess with the Panasonic it would be cropped. But like you said in the other forum it's kind of funky that 1.33:1 content gets cropped.

[thebarnman]

This cropping of pixels on the Panasonic, is that with the Panasonic menu setting of 480P or 4K or both?

[chip75]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

This cropping of pixels on the Panasonic, is that with the Panasonic menu setting of 480P or 4K or both?

I will double-check, but I don't think it matters.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

This cropping of pixels on the Panasonic, is that with the Panasonic menu setting of 480P or 4K or both?

Originally Posted by chip75

I will double-check, but I don't think it matters.

I did check. When outputting SD it displays at 720 wide, but as you can't always 1:1 with SD content you only have 16:9 or 4:3 options so overscan comes into play and you lose some height. But that's with my display. Even upscaling at higher resolutions which loses the 8 pixels, the Panasonic says 720x567 BT.601 as its source content.

[thebarnman]

Originally Posted by chip75

I did check. When outputting SD it displays at 720 wide, but as you can't always 1:1 with SD content you only have 16:9 or 4:3 options so overscan comes into play and you lose some height. But that's with my display. Even upscaling at higher resolutions which loses the 8 pixels, the Panasonic says 720x567 BT.601 as its source content.

I have the Sony A90J, Vincent the reviewer mentions the upscaling of SD content (assumingly from a DVD) has no overscan.

I wonder if it would be different with my display? If there's an easy way for me to check (I don't have any fancy testing equipment) please let me know.

Actually I think my TV shows what the player is outputting when I hit the info button...I'll have to check that.

According to the internet "HD DVD AND Blu-ray, the standard DVD's resolution is 720x480 pixels for NTSC DVD and 720x576 pixels for PAL DVD in either 4:3 or 16:90 aspect ratio."

[chip75]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

I wonder if it would be different with my display? If there's an easy way for me to check (I don't have any fancy testing equipment) please let me know.

Check whether the player is displaying 704 pixels or that there's overscan if you display DVDs at 480? I'd assume the former is a certainty, and I'd go with Vincent with his review.

Test patterns/discs are the way to go to check. If you haven't got any, you might try one of those DVDs with the THX tests.

Failing that you could create a few patterns with Photoshop and output them in Da Vinci Resolve. I might give that a go this week.

[gardengirl1331]

So yesterday something weird started happening. When I hit pause and the timer goes out on me the screen is suddenly turning pink then going to the input "page" on the TV since the player is off. This doesn't happen every single time but I've noticed it 4-5 times in the last two days. Once it even freaked out and did this weird pixel screen that was the paused image and like a pink overlay of heavy pixels then the TV flashed from the player to the input screen back and forth then went black and to the input page. ?? It's working fine in all other aspects (aside from not upscaling well (will try to turn the SDR>HDR upscale off and see if it helps.) for now I'm just using the 800M2 for blurays and DVDs)

I did just remember we're using an old cable for it, we're ordering a new HDMI cable and I'll see if that helps. But if not, is there anything else it could be??

[chip75]

Originally Posted by gardengirl1331

I did just remember we're using an old cable for it, we're ordering a new HDMI cable and I'll see if that helps. But if not, is there anything else it could be??

Pink and green screens are signs of handshake issues or HDCP problems.

Unplug your player (HDMI and power off the TV and player)) and leave it for 10 minutes. Plug everything back in andpower on the TV then the player.

A cable should help.

[AKORIS]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I tried to, a year ago. My first 820 player started pixelating on certain discs (misaligned laser) just over a year after I bought it, so it was out of warranty.

I found that Panasonic doesn't have a repair facility of their own in the US, they work through a licensed repair place in Florida. It seemed kinda shady and was difficult to get info out of. I seem to remember it mostly does cameras, and it was confusing to see if they would even repair a UHD player at all.

Since I was out of warranty, certified shipping to Florida for such a huge package and the flat fee to just get it in the door to be looked at would already cost like half of what a new one would cost, before the cost of any repairs, and it would still be a repaired old machine, so I gave up and bought a brand new one.

My memory is a bit fuzzy on this one, I might be slightly off on a few details, but the gist of it is that it seemed like a waste of time. These machines aren't really meant to be repaired, it seems, just replaced.

Again, though, I was 4-5 months beyond the 1-year warranty, maybe it's slightly different if you're still within it.

your experience applies to everything--- computers, appliances, TV's, blu ray players, etc etc. This is the way the world works these days....

I had a compressor go out on my expensive LG fridge a month or so back-- $1500 to repair it!!! (paid about $2200 for it around 5 years ago)
I bought a new Samsung fridge from Costco instead for $1000

[VanHiscers]

I have now found another disc that my UB820 is having problem with: this time it wouldn’t play at all, it just says the disc isn’t compatible… It’s the recent MOD release of Kiss the Girls. This is the first time I have a problem with a Paramount release, and I’ve tried 2 copies. Another person from the Kiss the Girls thread told me his UB820 played the movie fine though…

[thebarnman]

Originally Posted by VanHiscers

I have now found another disc that my UB820 is having problem with: this time it wouldn’t play at all, it just says the disc isn’t compatible… It’s the recent MOD release of Kiss the Girls. This is the first time I have a problem with a Paramount release, and I’ve tried 2 copies. Another person from the Kiss the Girls thread told me his UB820 played the movie fine though…

I've had that happen before with a different regular Blu-ray. Ejected it and pressed play again...worked fine the 2nd time.

[thebarnman]

Originally Posted by chip75

Check whether the player is displaying 704 pixels or that there's overscan if you display DVDs at 480? I'd assume the former is a certainty, and I'd go with Vincent with his review.

Test patterns/discs are the way to go to check. If you haven't got any, you might try one of those DVDs with the THX tests.

Failing that you could create a few patterns with Photoshop and output them in Da Vinci Resolve. I might give that a go this week.

I'll see what I can discover hopefully tonight.

[gardengirl1331]

Originally Posted by chip75

Pink and green screens are signs of handshake issues or HDCP problems.

Unplug your player (HDMI and power off the TV and player)) and leave it for 10 minutes. Plug everything back in andpower on the TV then the player.

A cable should help.

On sunday turning off the power to everything seemed to help, but yesterday it did it again. I tried to get it to do it again to snap a photo of it, but it wouldn't haha. of course. So yes powering it down did help temporarily, I hope the new cable will help. Of course it's 10 days past the return/exchange on it, so I really hope the cable is the issue. It's old. We had it with the old bluray player, moved it to the new 4k when we upgraded in nov 21, saw it was making the grain go nuts and it looked like static/bugs. Switching the cable then helped that problem, and until I posted yesterday, right as I was posting, I remembered it's an old cable. So hearing this makes me feel a bit better! Thanks!

[gardengirl1331]

Originally Posted by AKORIS

your experience applies to everything--- computers, appliances, TV's, blu ray players, etc etc. This is the way the world works these days....

I had a compressor go out on my expensive LG fridge a month or so back-- $1500 to repair it!!! (paid about $2200 for it around 5 years ago)
I bought a new Samsung fridge from Costco instead for $1000

I took a class in high school (with a name that didn't age well haha) called Man and His Environment, it was actually and english class?! But we talked about this stuff a lot. One question the teacher asked was how many of our grandparents still have the toaster they got when they got married and everyone raised their hands. We talked about how we're in a throw-away society and how it costs $75 to fix a $50 toaster, and it's getting harder and harder to find someone to fix it, and this was... wow, a few decades ago... and is MUCH MUCH worse now. We had my in-laws old washer from 1979 in our last two rentals, during those 13 years we went through 3 dryers (and the washer survived our sump going out during floods one year and was floating in 4' of water we dried it out and last I heard from our old landlord it was still working!!!!) the only thing we ever had to do was replace the belt once in all that time! The last one had the thermostat on it go, my husband was going to just order the part and fix it, but you couldn't get it without the heating element, which together was $250! The dryer cost us $200, the replacement dryer cost us $225?! It's horrible and such a waste! The guy who sold it to us said expect things to only last about 5-10 years, and you're lucky if it lasts more then 8 or so. Yet if you have any appliances from the 50's-70's, as long as you take care of them they'll still be working today. Sadly due to this his business is now gone after being in town since the 1940's! He still does repair work and when I called him about our cooktop and wall oven (original to the house from the early 80's) he said keep them working as LONG as possible because the new stuff is such crap now. The cooktop has a weird hard wired element that can't be replaced and is wonky to use, but we can still use it knowing it's only for low and high. haha. The wall oven is awesome, since it was ugly my husband told me to do whatever I want with it and I got high heat engine paint and painted it candy apple red, with the old chrome on it it looks like a 1950's car!! We've replaced the heating element and a couple other little things (sadly the clock stopped working and no where to get the part) and knock on wood it's still working well, and pre-heats to 500* in less than 10mins!!!!

But yes this throw-away stuff really gets me too. I'd much rather fix things and have them last a lifetime! Making higher profits is more important and making stuff shit that will die in a few years making you buy it again and again will not be sustainable for much longer. I really hope this changes back.

[samuelkhan999]

https://www.eurogamer.net/new-xbox-s...microsoft-leak

Xbox abandoning blu ray?

[thebarnman]

Originally Posted by chip75

Check whether the player is displaying 704 pixels or that there's overscan if you display DVDs at 480? I'd assume the former is a certainty, and I'd go with Vincent with his review.

Test patterns/discs are the way to go to check. If you haven't got any, you might try one of those DVDs with the THX tests.

Failing that you could create a few patterns with Photoshop and output them in Da Vinci Resolve. I might give that a go this week.

Hi Chip,

Last night I popped in a regular DVD with the Panasonic 820 set at 480p, but all the TV said was 480p SD...so there's no full resolution listing.

Then I popped in my old Joe Kane Video Essentials on DVD since I know that has test patterns. When the Panasonic is set to 480p, not only did the test pattern show there is overscan close to 5% on the upper part of the image, the image was also stretched to 16x9 (it's a 4:3 ratio video.)

Afterwards I set the Panasonic 820 to 4K, this time the video was it's original 4:3 ratio and the test pattern displayed looked to have no overscan.

Of course I want the TV to do the up-conversion so what I'll try tonight (I really didn't have time last night) is to use the same DVD, set the Panasonic 820 to 480p, then set the TV to display the original ratio and then check at that time to see what the test pattern shows.

It will be interesting to see what the results are at that point.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

Then I popped in my old Joe Kane Video Essentials on DVD since I know that has test patterns. When the Panasonic is set to 480p, not only did the test pattern show there is overscan close to 5% on the upper part of the image, the image was also stretched to 16x9 (it's a 4:3 ratio video.)

That's what I got. I had to set the TV to 4:3 to display properly, 16:9 and 4:3 were the only options without zoom.

Originally Posted by thebarnman

Afterwards I set the Panasonic 820 to 4K, this time the video was it's original 4:3 ratio and the test pattern displayed looked to have no overscan.

Was it displaying 704 wide? it would be weird if your SONY was an anomaly.

____________________________________

Sorry if folks are bored with the "my DVD is cropped" talk, I know it's not a priority for most. From what I can gather it's also something from digital to analogue conversion (or vice versa I can't remember), some of our UK broadcasters flipped around with the method.

[thebarnman]

Originally Posted by chip75

Was it displaying 704 wide? it would be weird if your SONY was an anomaly.

I don't know if it will be 704 or 720 since I don't have a way to generate that info at least on the equipment I have...or at least I don't think I can get that type of info.

I ran out of time tonight but I will have lots of time tomorrow evening. All I'll be able to do when I set the player to 480p, is to then set the TV so it will show the proper ratio and check out the test pattern. I'm guessing it's not going to be as bad when compared to the TV's stretched mode of SD content. It might even be perfect but again all I can do is look at the test pattern.

Tomorrow (Wednesday night) I'll take a picture of the results and post it.