DP-UB820-K 4K UHD Streaming Blu Ray Disc Player with Dolby Vision Playback

Panasonic is a well-established, highly respected name in electronics, a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works in Fukushima, Osaka, by Kōnosuke Matsushita, and incorporated its principal subsidiary in the United States as Matsushita Electric Corporation of America in New York City in September 1959. It began producing television sets for the U.S. market under the "Panasonic" brand name in 1961 and changed its corporate name to conform with its global "Panasonic" brand name, which comes from the root words "Pan," meaning universal, and "Sonic," referring to sound. The "Panasonic Corporation of North America" division is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, since 2013, after being previously headquartered in Secaucus, New Jersey, since the 1980s. I have a new Samsung Neo QLED Q95 TV, and, with the advent of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, I needed a new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player to take advantage of this television's advanced graphics and sound capabilities and its HDCP requirements. HDCP stands for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. It is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent the unauthorized copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across HDMI connections for digital devices like Blu-ray players, cable boxes, and streaming devices. HDCP 2.2 is essential for 4K content delivery. I am a movie enthusiast. Old-fashioned, I prefer movie theaters over streaming video services. Streaming video is not equal to and is not a satisfactory substitute for the cinema theater-quality visual and sound experience. The next best visual and sound experience is found only in Blu-ray and 4K discs. I collect DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K discs. As streaming video platforms increase their dominance, Blu-ray Player manufacturing is being discontinued. In December 2024, LG announced that it ceased production of Blu-ray players, joining Samsung and Oppo. While PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles also play Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD discs, the feature adds complexities. This means that only Sony and Panasonic are the remaining major brands that are still manufacturing Blu-ray players. Get your Blu-ray player while they are still being manufactured. When comparing Sony and Panasonic Blu-ray players with Ultra HDR, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos capabilities, I found information advising that the Panasonic automatically detects and switches between Dolby Vision and HDR10, and that the Sony requires manual selection. For me, this eliminated Sony as an option. I chose an upper-end Panasonic, the DP-UB820, because it supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ formats and includes a proprietary HDR Optimizer function that adjusts to the TV’s brightness capabilities through its exclusive "HCX" technology for 4K high-precision chroma processing; it also supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks. I do not appreciate streaming movies. Streaming subscriptions are expensive. You cannot have just one or a few. There are so many competitors with exclusive libraries and video streaming rights that you must have many streaming subscriptions to view the latest and greatest movie choices. As I said before, this is expensive. Too, streaming video presents other problems. Not all streaming video platforms are equal, particularly when it comes to 4K. Notably, Netflix streams 4K at a compressed 15–25 Mbps bitrate; Disney+ is at 16 Mbps; Apple TV+ is at 25 Mbps; and Amazon Prime Video is at 18 Mbps. Moreover, your experience depends on your internet speed, the number of actively connected internet devices, overall internet traffic, and interference in general, as well as the subscription tier level of your streaming video service and settings within the service's app, over and above the year, make, model, caliber, and calibration of your television. Even so, viewing requires the right equipment more than anything else. If you watched "The Rings of Power," you may have experienced scenes that were too dark to see what was happening. This result is from so-called "Dark Cinematography," a style of filmmaking that utilizes minimal light sources to create a visually ominous and stirring atmosphere, often associated with suspense genres; it prioritizes mood and tension over bright, clear visuals, aiming to immerse the viewer in a sense of mystery and darkness. Viewing can be extremely difficult and frustrating in streaming videos. In viewing the Denis Villeneuve 2021 ~ 2024 "Dune: Part One and Part Two," here too, there were a number of scenes that were too dark to see what was happening. "Dune" was partially filmed in 4.5K resolution, which is higher than Dune's more prevalent 4K resolution, with the 4.5K resolution being 4480 x 2520 pixels and the 4K digital resolution being 3840 x 2160 pixels. 4.5K offers more pixels and sharper detail than standard 4K. The "Dune" movie shown in the IMAX Digital Cinema Package (DCP) format has a 4K resolution with a high picture bitrate reaching up to 500 Mbps. Streaming video services cannot accommodate the large file size of movies, so they compress the file. In doing so, there is a loss in visual and acoustic fidelity. Bitrate compression is essential to streaming videos, for uncompressed content would require massive bandwidth and be cost prohibitive. Imagine the visual fidelity loss through the streaming video bitrate compression to 25 Mbps or less. Since 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs have a maximum video bitrate of 128 Mbps, albeit compressed but less so than streaming, such discs are able to present the sharpest visuals, richest colors, and a more cinematic viewing experience outside a theater above that presented in streaming video platforms. When it comes to dark cinematography, the Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player's Dolby Vision's dynamic metadata plays a crucial role by allowing for precise adjustments in the darkest areas of a scene, ensuring details are visible even in scenes with very low-light situations while still maintaining the intended contrast and color accuracy.

I've always liked Panasonic's Blu-ray Disc Players. They are solid, high-quality performers. This is my fourth such player (DP-UB820) from them for the Blu-ray Disc format--and second player for 4K UHD discs! This player is a replacement for an aging standard-definition 5-disc DVD changer which I recently retired (although, obviously, the DP-UB820 is a single-disc player and nobody actually makes multi-disc changer/players anymore). Also, of additional note: Panasonic's players will take on almost any home-burned/recorded disc you throw at them (CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, and dual-layer versions of the aforementioned video disc types--just no DVD-RAM playback). PC-burned disc playback may not mean much except to those who are all-in on PC disc burning or who still burn discs (I am--and I edit video which I then render and commit to disc complete with menus and all using my PC). Committing home-edited video to physical media is still the best method for the high-quality presentation of said video. I am a die-hard physical media enthusiast so this Panasonic 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc player is the way to go--regardless of whether you're using store-bought/commercial discs (movies/TV shows) or home-burned discs!! The picture quality is amazing for DVDs, HD Blu-ray Discs, and 4K UHD Blu-ray Discs. Colors are amazing! Ideally, you'll want to use this player on a TV with HDR and Dolby Vision; however, this thing will make your discs look great even on SDR TVs. And if you're still using an early 4K TV (non-HDR/SDR-only), you'll be future-proofed with the Panasonic DP-UB820 because of its HDR and Dolby Vision features for when you do decide to upgrade your TV to an HDR or Dolby Vision TV. You'll also be amazed at the quick boot-up time and the quick disc-loading times of the DP-UB820. I cannot speak to the streaming capabilities of the player because I am a "physical-media-first" type of person and so I use this player with DVD and Blu-ray Disc playback in mind; besides I have AppleTV 4K for streaming. My older three Panasonic Blu-ray Disc players (all still functioning well and going strong) are the DMP-BD30 (an early rugged "warrior" and "veteran" from 2008 of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war), a 2012 portable unit DMP-B200, and 2016's THX-certified 4K UHD winner DMP-UB900!!! So, yes, Panasonic--and, yes, the current DP-UB820; another winner and highly recommended by this home-theater enthusiast!!

Great premium 4K bluray player. Picture quality is identical in 4K to Sony UBP-X700 except that it upscales bluray and dvd better than Sony. My Xena, Sliders dvds look significantly better with the Panasonic than the Sony. For dvds, it is a huge improvement in picture quality. For Blu-ray movies, it also improves the picture quality. However, back when TVs were cathode tube, the Blu-ray and dvds looked just as good, but actually sharper video without the grainy images. If an S-Video were plugged in, the picture got better. 4K tvs for some reason degrade dvd video quality and Blu-ray also is not better than on older model tvs.