Panasonic UB820

[AVSCraig]

Early reports are that this 4k player does a great job of tone mapping HDR ! Post up your reports here please !

[bmoney]

I’m on vacation. But wanted to pop in and say the TM on this unit is amazing. Blows the Oppo away because it does full wcg. It’s also dynamic as it changes the tone map for different nit titles.

Also you can tweak it to your liking with the slider and the white and black slider

Awesome!  Highly recommended

[bmoney]

Btw I started a thread in the 4K Blu-ray player forum

[DLCPhoto]

Can anyone who owns one confirm whether or not this unit allows subtitles to be shifted?  With a scope screen, this is often a problem, where they either overlap, or are completely outside the picture.

Everything else on this looks awesome, and if it does allow shifting, it's going to be hard to resist buying it!

[AVSMike]

Yes, it does have that feature.

[DLCPhoto]

Yes, it does have that feature.

Thanks for the reply and confirmation, Mike.

I currently use a custom curve with my Philips BDP-7501, and the result is quite good.  But there is some variation from one move to the next, presumably based on their mastering.

The UB-820's ability to adjust its tone-mapping for each individual movie, if it proves to work well, with no undesirable 'side effects,' should produce even better results.  And from what I've read on various forums, so far it's living up to its claims, with full WCG to boot.

Plus, I would be able to sell my HDFury Linker, which I now need to enable the DI, and prevent Gamma D autoswitching, which would help offset the cost.

Having it give me the ability to shift subtitles as well is icing on the cake!

[Paul Heroy]

Anyone have thoughts on the Panny 820 vs the new Pioneer Elite UDP-LX500?

Sold my Oppo 203 for about the price of the Pio, pondering whether to take a profit or re-invest, lol. I do have an Oppo 105 that isn't going anywhere, as my universal (non-4K, obviously) audio player. I don't necessarily need the SACD, DVD-A capability though it could be nice, once or twice a year.

[stridsvognen]

The LX500 is a very nice player and far more exclusive then the UB820, i did not have much time with the LX500, but my impression is its very alike the OPPO 203 on image performanc, no idea how its tonemapping works, in that area im sure the UB820 is the best.

So ill say it all depends on the display you want to connect it to, Panasonic have chroma distortion/ bandwidth issues but superior tonemapping, if you dont need the tonemappintg there is no reason whatsoever to chose a Panasonic player, as most other will then outperform it on various other image parameters.

[Paul Heroy]

I think the tone mapping on the Panasonic is a big deal for me b/c I'll mostly use the player to watch movies on my projector (JVC RS-500). Probably not going to be able to upgrade for a while on the projector side so the built in tone mapping of the new 4K JVCs won't be in my HT for a while.

[stridsvognen]

You would be better of sticking to Blu Ray discs, whos mastered to match the projector, no convertion needet, the UHD format is a gimick specially for projectors where you need to convert both the HDR and WCG, and result often depends of how much luck you have with the UHD mastering, i would recommend a OPPO 103D for your projector, who will upscale to 4K better than the Panasonic UB820 or OPPO 203.

[claw]

I find the UB820 SDR/BT2020 HDR tone mapping with its Optimizer produces the best picture I have seen on my three year old JVC RS500.   

[AVSCraig]

I find the UB820 SDR/BT2020 HDR tone mapping with its Optimizer produces the best picture I have seen on my three year old JVC RS500.   

I still don't have one, but I stand by my observation that Blu-rays looked better upscaled to 4K on my UB900 than the Oppo 203. I'm looking forward to picking up a UB820 to check out.