Not an all-time low, but still a great price for an amazing 4K player.
Supports HDR10, HDR10+ dynamic metadata and Dolby Vision HDR.
Edit: if you're needing more explanations on the player, there's some good responses in my last post on this https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/672015
Yeah totally at that sale price great features but bang for buck goes to Sony UBX700 imo, HDR10 & DV and dual HDMI outs for $325 standard pricing..
The Sony player is riddled with show stopping bugs. Has issues with a lot of discs. There’s a good reason why people buy these instead.
Also, it doesn’t automatically detect DV, every time you watch a movie you need to manually turn it on. Wildly stupid.
@bobmonkey17: That’s it. I forgot.
Not useful when some discs have absolutely zero indication of having Dolby Vision.
Yeah they did but a lot of issues have been ironed out with firmware updates.
I have one running in the backroom. DV auto switching is the only issue i have with it, granted that is stupid but I can look past it as DV was added in via firmware and it only cost me $250 when I bought it.
Any discs issues i ever had were due to finger prints on the discs.
its a lot of money, I stick to PS5 or XBSX.
Neither of those support Dolby Vision from a 4K disc.
98% of the people here won't know the difference.
For the 2% this is a deal, but for the 98% it's a waste of money and landfill.
Yeah as tempting as this is, if you already have an Xbox / PS5 it's not worth it. I would only consider it if you either want the 100% full experience or don't have a blu-ray player and were considering a gaming console.
i can verify i have no clue what any of those specs mean lol, came here for the ps5 comments
came to find out why this cost so much lol
Well, I think if you're going to spend thousands of dollars on a TV, you may as well make use of its full potential and buy a player that can utilise that potential. Well, that's my excuse anyway, as I have a 65in Panasonic OLED that obviously pairs well with this player.
I mean I feel like Dolby Vision vs HDR is a noticeable difference considering ones dynamic and the other is scene set
Dolby. Rofl. They get points for tenacity. That's about it.
pretty sure this is cheaper than 750 bucks but maybe I am wrong…
Have this. Great player and great quality but geez the interface and remote are straight out of 2004.
They build this great hardware and give it shitty firmware / UI - I never understood why so little effort for that side.
Left hand not talking to right hand?
Welcome to Panasonic life.. their smart software on the TVs is just as bad
Is it? It’s the most responsive and fastest of any smart TV OS. It has a decent selection of apps including all important 4K HDR 60fps YouTube support.
I was trying to generalise but failed lol
Well, from my experience with 2021 sets from LG, Sony and Samsung, Panasonic is much faster to navigate and get to the desired setting. The smart TV feature set is poor compared to the others though and they are missing some of the major apps.
Great product! I’ve had mine for a couple of months now. I used to use my PS5 to play my 4K discs but my 4K disc collection kept growing so I purchased the 820.
I choose it mainly for the twin HDMI outputs because my AVR is from 2012 and doesn’t have ARC, 4K pass through or any of the fancy new features.
Do you notice improved picture quality though ?
It looks slightly better to me. I do notice a bigger difference in regular blu-ray upscaling. It was mainly the duel HDMI outputs that convinced me to purchase.
I've been wanting to upgrade my old 2013 AVR because it doesn't have ARC, 4K HDR passthrough or 2.1 features. I currently run the PS5 through the HDMI port on my 75" Sony X90J then optical from TV to AVR. But since my AVR works great except for that, I couldn't justify the cost of a new unit.
So a 4K player with duel HDMI outputs made more sense for me. I definitely notice the increase in fidelity from the lossless audio.
I just wish the PS5 had duel MDMI outs, that would be perfect.
But overall, the PS5 plays 4K discs fine. For the price the console, its great value. If I had a budget TV I would of just stayed with the PS5 for 4K discs.
Consider an Orei device off Amazon for $50. It will extract the audio from hdmi inputs and allow you to route the audio to receiver and video to tv. I did this as I was in same situation, didn’t want to upgrade my 2007 Onkyo AVR. It’s great cos it also moves my audio from built in tv apps to get proper DD support that never worked over Optical connection.
@phatmike128: I’ll have to check them out. By DD, do you mean Dolby Digital. I definitely have 5.1 surround over optical. Is DD better sound quality than optical?
@jallen89: Yeah I meant Dolby Digital, but should have clarified you can actually get Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA (and maybe Atmos) out of your PS5 with this device, just depends if your older receiver can decode those lossless formats. Some TV apps on my 2017 Sony Android Tv like Disney+ only passed through 2 channels via optical until I got this and now I get DD 5.1.
@phatmike128: I did a quick google search. So apparently optical does do Dolby Digital but not Dolby Digital Plus.
It does seem like a reasonably priced way to get lossless audio from my PS5.
But Netflix has dv Atmos. I don't think the price of this Phys buying the discs, warrants the improvement in visual/auditory fidelity.
With AV1 CODEC, around the corner we should hopefully see an increase in staking quality, further shortening the two between staking services and hard copy
The atmos on Netflix and other streaming platforms are not the same as the ones on the disc. Netflix and others use ac3 with additional height channels, where as the disc version use discrete object based Audio (that’s my best understanding on the matter). But it also depends on the quality of mastering done by studios. But if you have a good discrete channel audio you should notice the difference. But only if you have the setup to shine. You are unlikely to notice the difference on a sound bar.
From a video perspective BR discs have a slight leg up especially in movies with lots of fast moving scenes. Once again how much do you notice is really dependent on what you need. I can notice to some extent, few of my friends can’t. And then there are one or two who can really tell. So unless you have a bad / slow internet or care about highest fidelity of Audio / Video and have invested in some form of “Home theatre” setup, you are better off streaming.
For the record I have this BR player and a Sony UBP-x700. If you are looking to get one, this is a good one to get.
Streaming versions of Atmos are not full bandwidth.
To put it into perspective, streaming Netflix video and Atmos soundtrack movies come down around ~30-50mbps versus a physical disc where the Atmos soundtrack alone is 50mbps.
Can one tell easily a noticeable difference?
Netflix is waaaay lower quality than that.
Netflix 4K video is about 11mbps and the Atmos audio 768kbps.
Physical discs range from 50-80mbps video and 3-10mbps audio.
The difference is huge and easily seen.
The difference is huge and easily seen.
and heard.
Does this support Dolby Atmos and ARC?
I couldn’t find exact answer anywhere other than the spec sheet where it says Yes for Atmos and no answer for ARC. Any exisiting users, please share your experience?
Yes to Atmos which is essentially Dolby TrueHD7.1 repurposed.
As for ARC or eARC, that's more on the receiver or TV end, you wouldn't be sending audio signal back to the player.
Thanks!
Can this play normal DVDs?
Yes
What about VHS?
(You missed Jjklark's joke. Presumably it was a joke at least.. $450 to play DVDs…)
Not a joke 😎 I have a tv that doesn’t have inputs for our old DVD player. The Mrs loves the nostalgia and old school dvd for our kids when picking a movie from the hoards of dvds we have.
@Jjklark: VHS was in Australia for 19 years before dvd came out.
DVD has been here for 23 years.
The fact your tv doesn't support your DVD player is quite telling.
I know you've got a huge library but yuck. For $450 just buy your favourites in a better format and move on.
region free?
Thanks.
How about VCD and audio CD? (profanity) it, you're paying enough, why doesn't it also play Super Audio CD?
I have the UB420 and it's great for watching movies and nothing else.
The whole 'online experience' is a gimmick that nobody even uses - so they could have left that out considering that the IU is also designed to signal that this thing is only to be used to watch 4K UHDs and Blu rays.
Serious question.
I don't have a decent sound system but have a 83" OLED.
Is the picture quality on noticeably superior playing on one of these vs Google Chromecast watchting Netflix 4K?
I can see noticeable differences when I stream the same movie on Netflix/Disney but in saying that, I regret paying for BR player + buying discs.. realised I am not much of a collector.
Great to know.
It's bugs me a little that I'm not maximising the potential of my LG C1 using streaming services after spending so much, but having said that it's still nice to watch on.
I'm like you, don't really wish to collect. In fact, it's seldom that I'd watch the same movie within the same decade.
Sure. But streaming services aren't cheap unless you watch a lot of content.
For the cost of an annual Disney plus I bought every decent Disney animated movie during jb's bogof. For me, after about 3 years frankly it'll be cheaper to own everything I'm interested in and at least I'll have the option of rewatching them (even though I may never. Frankly for $10 to buy 4k who cares). Not to mention it doesn't look like downsampled turd.
I also don't have to worry about Disney dominating the market, jacking prices 250%, whilst simultaneously not producing their back catalogue on disc anymore. Which you know they will do because they are bstards. At least I can keep what I've got then boycott the rest.
@justtoreply: I have a Netflix HD account that I don't pay for.. Thanks Fam! haha
We had Disney+ during a free trial. Since then, I've paid for a month x 2 during school holidays. I found content lacking.
I have also have Prime but that's pretty good value due to free shipping.
As others have suggested, the experience in watching streaming vs physical disk is definitely different, however, the average user wouldn't notice much of it.
If you care about the highest quality video/audio output, physical disk is the way to go as of today. If not, then it wouldn't matter much.
As you have suggested, if you don't have a decent sound system but a good display, in my opinion, it wouldn't be worth it if you buy physical media.
Yeah, that's the thing I'm lacking, a good sound system.
Having said that, any block busters, I tend to watch at the movies for the whole experience.
I think you already know the answer :)
Usually when watching 4K streamed content it is being compressed or encoded a certain amount to make it a size that can be streamed by the average person and is able to be decoded etc in a timely fashion. So if you watched a 4k movie from YouTube or Netflix or whatever and then watched the 4k version on disc you would see some differences.
To me the most noticeable difference is in the blacks. If there is a dark scene the blacks look patchy and low quality by comparison, can also notice it in fast action scenes, doesnt seem as crisp etc.
I have noticed the blacks being blocky.
I should borrow someone's 4K Blu-ray player to test at home, unfortunately I don't know anyone who has a stand alone Blu-ray player.
Im in the same boat 77C1 and play 4k discs through the PS5 and to me some scenes there's a lot of noise/grainy and I'm worried if I drop almost $500 if I won't be happy lol
weren't blu ray players like 20 bucks back in the day?
Can this play Blu Ray and DVDs form all regions ? I am looking for a 4K Blu Ray player that not only supports all kind of play back as above but also can play DVDs and Blu Rays form all regions. I understand 4K Blu Rays 99.99 % times are region free, but those 1080p Blu Rays and DVDs still have the pesky regions codes in them. Can the abobe Blu Ray player so that ? Please advise.
Regards
DVD and blu-ray playback are region locked. I’ve read that if you visit a Panasonic service centre, they will unlock DVD playback, but not blu-ray.
There is a site that sells custom firmware that does unlock blu ray playback but I’m unsure of the specifics.
I have this machine, you do need to take it to a Panasonic repair centre to get all region dvd unlocked. It is free and takes about ten minutes. Will play blu ray ok.
Jallen89 mentioned only DVD region is unlocked? Or they will unlock blu-ray regions too?
I have this player and it would be great if I can watch other region blu-ray.
My source of information is the Whirlpool thread.
I would love to get blu-ray region restrictions removed.
@jallen89: Whirlpool I see, would probably be quite active there. I have an oppo to watch all region DVD but none of my sources can play overseas blu-ray (non 4k).
The paid custom firmware also means cannot update to any future firmware versions?
@JL1: I’m not sure. I don’t know the specifics of the firmware so I can’t give you any factual information about it.
It annoys me that a $50 budget blu ray player is region free but a $600 midrange player is region locked.
A lot of people just say buy a budget player to play the region A discs but the reason we pay more for the premium players is to enjoy better upscaling.
Best player you can get if you want high quality experience.
UB9000 has better chassis and analog audio output… that's it.
Great Thanks for this I bought one !!
Will this be a good fit for a 2022 Samsung 8K QLED TV? I'm asking because the Samsung QLEDs don't support Dolby Vision, but this player does…so will there be incompatibility issues?
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/707142
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/703751
https://www.thegoodguys.com.au/panasonic-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray…
Good guys has it for $454 and you can stack it with Cashrewards 12% and c&c store credit promo.
Best bang for buck 4K player. DV, HDR, HDR 10+, Upscaling, 2 HDMI out - 1 is audio only, up 7.1 surround sound.