Panasonic - 4K Ultra HD Audio DVD/CD/3D Blu-Ray Player, DP-UB154P-K - Black

Picture and audio quality is twice as good as a DVD player. Everything is great, except for the remote. I do like the smaller size, but they took it too far. The buttons controlling the play of disc: play, stop, fwd, rwd, are small and close together. Four buttons per row, it would have been so much easier to operate with three per row. These are the buttons used most often, and they are the most difficult to use. Would I buy again? Absolutely.

Excellent picture and sound design and great focus

Best picture I have ever seen from a dvd player, it even upscales non 4K DVD’s.

The Panasonic DP-UB154 is Panasonic’s budget option for 4k UltraHD playback. The unit is small, simple and to the point. Unencumbered by the expectations of a smart player, this blu-ray player focuses on the mantra: “do one thing and do it right”. With this I find no fault. First I’ll skip any pretense and make a recommendation. If you’re an AV enthusiast and non-techy, non-gamer, or have a dedicated movie space, this is the player for you. Literally put the disk in and play like DVD players of old. The primary competition for any UHD player right now are game consoles. But since the death of the Xbox One S, there are really no budget options in that space right now, especially with digital only being pushed. While I’ve used an Xbox One S in the UHD player role it’s not ideal. With the fact that even starting my old Xbox One S, updating it, launching a movie, etc… is an exhausting process (for a UHD player only), the UB154 is a breath of fresh air. The UB154 is a small unit, under 13” wide. The left side is the disc tray, which is a traditional ejection tray (supporting standard and mini discs). There are only 2 buttons on the device: power and eject. On the back you also find simplified ports with an MVP of DC power, HDMI, and 10/100 ethernet. This player does not have WiFi, so keep that in mind for your setup. In my case, I wired my home theater a long time ago, so it’s a non-issue. That said, you shouldn’t need to do firmware updates too regularly (although mine did initially after powering on). The included remote is pretty basic. It’s not backlit or really comfortable in the hand. Buttons are small, but it’s effective for when you need all the controls. Ideally CEC is what you’d use on a day to day basis, but I had trouble initially with it. CEC will let you use your TV or receiver remote to control the playback of the blu-ray. I won’t blame my troubles on this device, but my rather finicky Marantz receiver. Software wise, this device does seem to support the basic ‘photo’, ‘video’, ‘audio’, ‘disc’ options. None of these are network enabled (unless you consider the BD Live functionality), but instead rely on either the disc drive or USB to read media. I’m not sure, in a world of connected services, and streaming devices you’d ever need this functionality but it’s there. Besides that, basic playback and information support is found. The settings menu lets you dive into a few deep settings, but overall keeps things simple. Setup correctly identified my projector as 4k and not-3d (which this device appears to support 3D, but I was unable to test) and HDR 10+. Of note, there is no Dolby Vision support to be found. My projector doesn’t support that anyways, but it’s worth mentioning. Playback was handled fairly well. Playback start time rivals almost any player I’ve owned, being much faster than some older non-UHD blu-ray players. The simplicity buys speed and that’s a welcome in this always connected checking for updates world. Pausing a movie and coming back to it could cause stuttering. Obviously the disc drive spun down in what is likely a power saving move, but likely unnecessary for anything but an EPA rating. Everything was drama free and it decoded my Bumble Bee movie gloriously. HDR 10+ worked flawlessly after a bit of a blank and display (which is a handshake that goes through my receiver to my projector that takes its time switching). Dolby Atmos bitstreamed perfectly from the disk. Detail was crisp and clear in both the audio and video side - reflecting their raw digital nature. Plugging in the normal BD, this also worked flawlessly in FullHD with Atmos streaming. Upscaling of the video looked good, but it’s hard to analyze what technology is in use. Overall the picture was definitely crisp, but only 1080p. The upscaling definitely made it look better than the raw blu-ray. So either UHD or FHD BD’s look excellent for a movie room. For my use case this is a god-send. A low maintenance, simple, fast UHD BD player is light years better than waiting for my Xbox One S to update and launch (and now I can relocate it and use it for more gaming). Overall this is a surgical device that correctly and precisely plays blu-ray disks. For that use case, it excels.

I can't believe how small and fast Blu-Ray players have gotten.  It seems like I've been upgrading Blu-Ray players about every two years.  When they first came out they were quite big with all sorts of features.  Many included the original steaming products, offering included streaming functions before Streaming functions became common on HD TV and then 4K; although most 4K TVs had streaming functions by the time they came out.  Ten plus years later, we all have streaming boxes or TV's that stream on their own.  But when 4K ultra Blu-rays started to be released, HD10+ was not yet released, and Hi  Res (384kHz/32-bit PCM wasnot common).  But the feature I was most looking forward to was DVD to 4K upconversion.  I have a lot of early TV shows from the 60's/70's that are only available on DVD's; I'm anxious to see how this Blu-Ray player does on these.  I have 3 current Blu-Ray players, one was supposed to upconvert from DVD to Blu-Ray quality, It was a nominal  improvement. To get started the front of the Panasonic DP-UB154P-K is about as plain as it could get, gone are the big LEDs telling you what it's doing.  I'm going to hide this in a big Audio Cabinet, where it won't be seen, so the fancy display won't be missed.  The on/off eject buttons are on the top right, they are small and black, hard to find; they had some LED backlighting to better find them.  There is a single red LED that tells you the unit is on.  Setup was an absolute breeze.   I connected to my Ethernet network, checked for updates and I was ready to go.  Note: this unit this not support/offer a WiFi connection.  So without a Ethernet connection, advanced Blu-Ray features won't be accessible.  The back of the unit has a power connection, HDMI connection and an Ethernet connection.  That's it.  No optical/digital output, only HDMI.  The unit supports 3D output if you have a DVD/Blu-Ray that supports that.  No Glasses are provided.  The unit supports absolutely every Audio/Video format that exists, including FLAC, via CD/DVD or USB connection.  It also supports DLNA connections, it found my NAS Server and 2 media servers with  me only needing to provide user/password information where required.  And it supports most Dolby Surround formats (except Atmos). In operation I started watching Wonder Woman 4K Ultra, I've watched it several times before but never on a player that supported HDR10+, HDR10.  I have to say the difference is quite impressive, the things in the shadows are much more apparent, and motion is more clear.  WW has a lot of very dark scenes, and visually they pop a lot better on this BluRay player than on my others.  I then tried playing Lost in Space, the 3rd season (in Color!). And the quality on  my 4K Sony TV was surprisingly good. I could see some color blending issues, but compared to the original which was heavily pixelated, the 4K image was remarkably good, and it surprisingly fit the screen very well (no black bars).  Very good.  Then on to Colombo, where I got black bars but again a much better image than I had before.  Here the player really shines. It's great at upconverting. The biggest con I had was lack of digital/optical outputs.  My surround setup feeds multiple independent Stereo systems, one 7.2 the other 5.1 (outside).  Without optical/digital outputs I could not get both to work. With HDMI I could get one or the other but not feed the audio signal to both. I tried a HDMI splitter, but it did not do what I needed.  I also with this blu-ray supported WiFi natively so that updates could be done without hooking it up to an Ethernet network.  For where I plan to use this player it's not a big deal, but for a different location it would be. It is quite a nice BluRay player, especially for state of the art 4K discs and older DVDs.