That’s a feature that the now discontinued Oppo Digital players offered, and would have been a welcome addition to this player so that other sources could take advantage of its unique HDR processing. All standard fare for this market, but I was bummed to note the lack of an HDMI input. The back panel of both players are nearly identical with dual HDMI outputs (one audio-only), a 7.1-channel analog audio output, USB support and a LAN connection.
I do prefer the UB900’s remote control to the UB820’s, which is smaller and lacks the backlit keys and spacious layout of the remote that comes with the older Panasonic player. The UB820 is nearly identical to the UB900 from an everyday operation standpoint: its menu structure and home screen are the same, and both players have the same sleek look, though the UB820 lacks touch- sensitive controls, THX certification and other minor details that make it feel slightly less high-end. I’ve owned the UB900 myself and found its video playback capabilities second to none, though its ergonomics didn’t fit with me as well as my reference Oppo Digital UDP-205 player. The UB820 closely resembles the Panasonic DMP-UB900 reviewed in the February/March 2017 Sound & Vision, a player that earned top marks for its performance and remains one of our top picks. At $499, the UB820 is a mid-to-upper-price offering, but read on to see why it’s the best player yet for corralling the wild, wild west of HDR.
BEST UHD PLAYER 2018 UPDATE
Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) HDR is also included and Dolby Vision support will be added in a firmware update slated for Fall 2018. While no discs exist yet in this format, having that support helps future-proof the player. The UB820 is also the first player I’m aware of that supports the new HDR10+ format. The HDR Optimizer feature found in the DMP-UB820 was designed to correct the HDR troubles of displays that either don’t support HDR or don’t do a great job with it.
Panasonic’s DMP-UB820 is the first player to offer advanced onboard tone mapping for High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) playback. Granted the quality of the disc media is fantastic, so in the end the player just needs to pass that data along to the display with as little manipulation as possible.įor this review we’re going to look at a new UHD Blu-ray player from Panasonic that actually does quite a bit of manipulation, but for good reason.
BEST UHD PLAYER 2018 PLUS
On the plus side, the quality of the UHD Blu-ray players we’ve seen has been uniformly good. But with the massive rise in the popularity of streaming, we’ve seen the player market continue to slim down. In my early days reviewing DVD players, I could literally enter an electronics store, walk out with over a dozen players, and that would only represent a sampling of the available models. Today’s Ultra HD Blu-ray player market is drastically smaller than the one for the spinning-disc machines of old.