Panasonic - 4K Ultra HD Streaming Blu-ray Player with HDR10+ & Dolby Vision Playback,THX Certified, Hi-Res Sound-DP-UB9000 - Black

This replaced an older Oppo Blu-Ray player. The Panasonic will load the video disc more quickly and gives an excellent video and audio output. It enhances a regular Blu-Ray or DVD. I do regret it will not read SACD's, but in truth i did not have that many. When used as a CD player the sound is full and rich. I have not played with customizing the settings yet and suspect i can improve it a bit, although the factory settings work so well I coukd be wrong. The player is very well built and silent in operation. Very pleased with its performance so far.

Watched this unit for over a year. Darn thing never went on sale anywhere. Even at this price, it sold out a couple of times, though. As it should have. This is the best 4K player available today. CON: LG should stop sitting on its laurels. No excuse why LG has not put out a newer model with 7.1.2 (Dolby Atmos) capability. That’s it for the Cons. PRO: REMOTE. Full size. Rectangular. For the cost of this unit, one would reasonably expect the buttons to be backlit. They are not. The remote has several buttons – Subtitle, Audio, Video Settings, HDR Settings, Sound Effects and High Clarity – not found on LG’s “Magic Remote.” These buttons give you direct access to various menus. FEATURES. Literally, too many to list but includes De Blur, De-judder, Clear, Smooth, Real Cinema, OLED Motion Pro, etc., as well as the usual suspect. There are recommended values for each setting on the Internet. A suggestion. The included “Basic Owner’s Manual” - a tiny 13-half-page pamphlet really - is useful as a fire starter in your fireplace. The actual - read useful - owner’s manual is available here – https://www.panasonic.com/content/dam/pim/au/en/DP/DP-UB9/DP-UB9000GN/DP-UB9000-User-Manual-Australia.pdf. Yeah, Australia??? Right. But, it appears to be for the American market. VIDEO: Own two LG 820s. Picture quality on a 77" LG OLED CX was marginally improved over the 820, noticeably in the Black and Contrast. Test disc and scene is always Atomic Blond 4K at the apartment fight sequence, which has motion, contrast and is dark. Good test sequence. SOUND: Sound is output using the unit’s analog plugs to 2 pre-amps and 6 amps with 4 powered subs (18", two 10" and one 8"). Unit handled it all very well and produced concert-quality sound. THX: THX certified. However, such certification has more to do with the design and materials used in the construction of whatever than with picture or sound quality. The final output must meet THX specifications. It is the mandatory build quality that makes THX certification desirable for the consumer. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION

If you believe physical media is dead, spend an hour or two with your favorite film in UHD on this and I guarantee you’ll change your mind. Not only does the picture quality on 4k discs with this player blow any streaming platform out of the water, but its ability to uplevel the quality of older Blu-rays and even DVDs is surprisingly incredible. I found myself more than once checking true output of older 1080p discs because, to my eyes, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t native 4k. Sound quality is off the charts too. The fullness and detail you can achieve (depending on your sound system) is leaps and bounds better than any previous player I’ve owned, and certainly better than compressed streaming sound. I’ll admit the menu system is a bit complicated, but that comes with the territory of purchasing a top of the line “it can do anything” player, and it’s pretty easy to navigate with the help of more video and audio-technically focused people on YouTube who can just walk you through it. It’s all worth it, though. I’ve never enjoyed my media this much before, and even my streaming-only friends admit the experience is better. It’s an expensive piece of equipment to be sure, but if you love entertainment and still believe in the quality that comes with physical media, this is the player you need to wring the most potential out of your setup.

This is a well built player with the best picture quality I’ve seen for BD and 4K disks. It really excels at HDR and Dolby vision, I don’t think there is another player that can produce as good a picture. I’ve had zero issues with it perfectly playing every disc I throw at it and has never locked up or glitched like all my other bran players have occasionally. My OLED Sony is just amazing with this player, and the improvement on even my 2015 85” Samsung was surprising, specially on HDR movies. With the older Samsung I disabled HDR on my Apple TV as it was always too dark and made the picture much worse then with it off, but with this player HDR looks amazing. The settings allow the scale to be set by tV type and it makes all the difference. I do wish it was an all format player, but I’ll keep my Sony ES 4K player for the un-supported formats, the quality upgrade is worth buying this Panasonic.

This thing is built like a tank, has SO many options that you won't find on other 4K players that were seemingly meant to spin the disc and output video, nothing else. Pricey? Yes. But a fine example of "you get what you pay for" IMO. If you have a large library of 4K discs or are in the process of growing one and want the best, this is an amazing option. Setup was simple and there's definitely a noticeable difference between this and the $300 LG player I was previously using. THANK YOU Panasonic for including a backlit remote, all you other companies selling higher end audio/video stuff PLEASE take notice :)