Just to make things clear, those in the video who got it right COULD tell, but they're all either graphic designers, trained TV calibrators, editors, or writers at LMG.

"They couldn't tell" "They could tell" Real star of this episode.

One of the best parts about LTT videos is they're like wikipedia deep dives. I've wondered about this for a while but didn't even know where to start, and got way more info than I even expected. Great video.

The UB820 is a great player. It’s a shame a lot of manufacturers have pulled out of making 4K players now. Panasonic, Sony and LG are the only ones that seem to be in it still. Panasonic do the best ones. Some of the players have a show stopping issue of not being able to go to the third layer of a 4K disc without freezing or glitching out.

One big thing that I'd like to add about Dolby Vision... even though cheaper Blu-ray players may support Dolby Vision, a good number of them *do not* support automatic switching. In other words, if you're going to watch a movie, you'd need to check to see if it supports Dolby Vision, and if so, turn it on in the player's settings. Also, you'd want to make sure to turn it off when you're done. That's one of the reasons why I went with the Panasonic model after I sold my Oppo as it was pretty much the only model that supported automatic switching. I think there's a cheaper LG model that supports it now too, but I can't recall off the top of my head. Oh, and as a quick side note, one reason why I never even considered the Series X as a UHD player is that I was fairly disappointed by the Xbox One S back in the day. (That was before I had Dolby Vision anyway.) The biggest problem with the One S is that the disc noise was just so loud that it was easily audible in low volume situations. Good Blu-ray players are actually built to help isolate that noise.

This "problem" was small enough that it definitely didn't warrant an apology. That said, the video is good for extra information on the subject.

Is it just me or is the videography/editing really really good in this episode? Like the switch between the content and the sponsor block is very evident in quality. I didn't notice this previously on my phone.

One added feature of a standalone Panasonic is the dual hdmi outs, allowing hdr video to be passed to a display, and uncompressed audio to be sent to older avrs. That feature alone sold it for me.

All of this really highlights how far ahead of the curve Pioneer was. They implemented 72Hz 3:3 pull down, and 12-bit processing 15 years ago in DVD and BD

"You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct" good to see Linus has an inner bureaucrat

Thanks for making an updated video and addressing some of the shortcomings of the last one. Love you guys!

I wanted to let you guys know, this is why I really love LTT. You guys take a fairly complicated technical problem (or set of problems) and dissect them into easy to understand smaller problems. Does it teach me everything I want to know? No, but now I know what sorts of questions I should be asking, and how to look for more information. Nice job as always.

Audiophiles are the same. I remember in the 80s, a friend paid a fortune for a CD setup and fridge-sized sub woofer. He'd explain the 'smooth' bell curve compared to the digital bell curve of bits. He'd then play a bit of music and say "Can you hear it?"... to which I would stare at him for a while and say "Ten grand? Really??".

"They couldn't tell" "They could tell" Those cracked me up

Have an xbox one x, bought a 4k blu-ray player purely for Dolby vision/atmos, looks amazing, but what blew me away was how good the sound quality is, its insane how high-quality is it. Audio is definitely a huge upgrade over streaming services.

I have a Panasonic ub820 and haven’t regretted it for over a year now. Between Dolby vision support, chroma upsampling, and other features not mentioned here like dvd/1080p Blu Ray upscaling, hdr tone mapping for a 1000nit cap, and very flexible audio options, it’s been really nice to have a dedicated player. I’d say that if you primarily watch movies on disc it’s worth getting one.

The editors that you have are amazing, because they really took what you said and adjusted the screen in real life so we could understand what you were saying and what it actually meant

Speaking of HDR... what happened to LTT doing a lot more HDR content after that one HDR video like 18 months ago or whatever it was?

Also keep in mind that the Panasonic player also has an option to select your TV format i.e. OLED, LCD, LED etc. I also get screen/image retention on my C9 OLED. Many people say it's because of the green the use booting the console up and also the U.I. but I have also seen it in games like Sunset Overdrive and ReCore.

Very informative! You explained things better than many others have. Thanks.

We need more home theater, blue ray, 4k, Imax, Dolby Vision/Audio content from you. Do the whole thing. There's a lot of confusion out there.

Thank you Linus. The UB820 serves me well but I am a pretty big cinephile. It's also worth noting that there are quite a few different "profiles" or flavors of DolbyVision. The Bluray players are the devices capable of showing you a disc that was encoded with the FEL aka "full enhancement layer". It's more than just tone mapping in that case.

I just wanna say the production value of the last couple of videos has been absolutely amazing. Great watch!

One of the reasons I have a Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player is that it lets you adjust the position of the subtitles. This is very important for since I have a cinemascope (extra-wide) screen for my projector, so if the subtitles are in the black area, they would be off my screen.

Love the effort that went onto the effects for this video. It really helped bring what Linus was describing to life.

Hey so since we're doing followups to old videos, it wold be cool to see a revisiting to the "multi user, 1 CPU" concept. With the explosion in core counts in the last few years and things like GPU splitting, it would be really interesting to see what could be done in a single system now.

Well, I can confirm that there is a marked difference between my Xbox Series X and my Panasonic UB820 when playing 4K discs. I'm using an 85" Samsung 4K Mini-LED display and a Dolby Atmos capable sound system. One big bonus with the UB820 is the HDR Optimiser. That makes a considerable difference all on its own. Generally, I find that the output of the UB820 is better in every respect over the XSX. Of course, they both look good - and to the average consumer, both are pleasing to the eye. In my case, when comparing both players, the UB820 is an obvious step up in quality compared to the XSX, especially when the HDR Optimiser is properly configured for your display and enabled. But, it doesn't stop there. The audio is better too. They both can process and output Dolby Atmos. But, the UB820 does a far better job of it. What's especially noticeable with the XSX is the centre channel dialogue sounding muddled in very noisy scenes. The UB820 seems to have better separation / resolution as regards the centre channel / dialogue. I can actually hear voices clearly over the action. Something that is a struggle with the XSX. Not only that, but in very noisy films - like Top Gun Maverick, when it gets really loud - there's a kind of 'shrill' with some scenes that is uncomfortable to listen to. On the UB820 there is none of that uncomfortable shrill and it can be played at the same loud volumes. So, in my case then - yes, there is a considerable difference in quality between the two devices. The UB820 is definitely the player to use if I want the best out of my 4K collection.

I bought a Panasonic U820 a couple years ago, but ended up using my consoles for 4K Blu-rays and put the U820 in the living room with a basic 4K TV. Now that I just upgraded to a 4K OLED, I told my wife that I will be taking back the U820 for movies :)

Honestly, the water bottle at 4 minutes looks nice, I would really love an LTT water bottle design, but in like a really cool matte or concrete Gray. I haven't bought one yet, but I would legitimately buy that one.

i've been waiting for more blu-ray content from you guys for years!!! thank you!

I'm personally using the Sony UBP X800 M2 for my 4K UHD discs, and have an Epson 5050UB at 135" and it looks absolutely incredible, but when you want to experience the best SOUND, there's no comparison. Streaming simply can't hang.

I went and bought the ub820 on sale shortly after this came out from using an xbox as well. Such a difference! I had been kneecapping my TV's capabilities by not supplying it with DV apart from streaming. Made me look at my audio 5.1 set up as well and was able to reconfigure and repurpose/swap out a few things on the cheap for an entry level but competent 5.2.2 system. really took it to the next level. This really does improve image quality to where I can tell a difference with the proper media. Fantastic upscaling for standard blu ray and dvd, maybe even better than my old integra 8.9 with it's HQV Reon VX processing.

Linus looking at optical media in 2022?!?! My dream is still alive

You get bonus points for the examples on this one. Nice work.

As a Panasonic 820 owner and a Series X owner there is just something nice about a normal DVD/Blu-Ray player. Oh and the remote is a big thing for me the basic normal remote with the Panasonic is nice to have. Also the Panasonic can be had for less than $500 i paid $399 for mine when Best Buy had them on sale.

This is one of your better videos! Thank you for posting this.

6:06 explains quite good why it is so hard to get two screens that have an identical image output for dual-head screen which is far more annoying than this IMHO.

Which one will upscale my laserdiscs?

All the information you’ve given us, and how much we’ve learned throughout the years, is way more than that small hiccup 🤜🤛

Stumbled across to your channel, fantastic review and info. Thank you so much. As others have said you made a complicated topic easier to understand..... became a subscriber, Thanks again

So.. I feel like this needs to be tested, since, to my recollection, Sony was credited with creating the Blu-Ray technology in the first place, What about a PS5 vs a standalone 4k UHD Blu-Ray player

I have also understood that Panasonic players are pretty great at HDR tonemapping, useful for less capable HDR TVs or also for OLEDs to some degree.

This video was fun. The main reason to go with the 4K Panasonic Blu-ray player is for the superior audio experience you get with the 4K physical disk over the 4K digital streaming services. One of my favorite movies is the first Top Gun 4K Blu-ray. It’s expanded Dolby Atmos surround is amazing. Apollo 13 in DTS X is also great. The Hunt for Red October is also fun .My bedroom can only handle a 5.1 surround system but it still is a fun to hear. Hopefully your team will do a follow up to this video and compare 4K streaming audio to the 4K Blu-ray. You will be pleasantly surprised on the difference in quality from the disk to streaming formats. I have the lg 65 c2 oled tv. Once I got that I had to upgrade my receiver to Dolby vision and Atmos along with the Panasonic 4K Blu-ray you mentioned. Thank you for your great content.

The amount of effort that they put in the videos is amazing!

Been a UB820 owner for nearly 2 years now, best 4k blu ray player out there right now.

I love my Blu-rays, but I'm investing in a home server for my remuxes because it's getting ridiculously troublesome to have the right hardware and even some studios not releasing Dolby Vision Blu-ray, while on the "alternative" websites you see people putting together hybrid releases of the HDR Blu-ray with incredible bitrate with the Dolby Vision extracted from streaming services. It's madness.

The straight faced, "they couldn't tell," and, "they could tell" was brilliant 🤣

Do. More. Of. These. Videos. You guys have far and away the best TV content on YT.

I'd like to see you guys comment on the HDR optimizer feature of the UB 820. It applies dynamic tone mapping after you select the peak luminance of your TV in the settings of the player. So if you have an OLED TV, it will tone map to like a peak brightness of 800. Even if the content was mastered to 4,000

This is a fantastic video that covers every odd little issue I have with my series X as a 4k player. I have the Panasonic now and I'm happy with the performance. I don't know if it's actually worth the $500, but there aren't many other options that do what it does, as well as it does. It also has a feature that allows it to calibrate levels for projectors, which is another nice touch.

If you know what to look for its very easy to spot and then you can't unsee it, for example computer generated fonts scrolling in an credit, flickering due to the lower chroma resolution.

I have a Panasonic DP-UB9000 top-tier player for my home theater room, and the picture and sound are phenomenal

I remember when talking about this back in the days, I could not tell the difference between the Xbox player and a stand alone BR player but everybody had superman eyes and extra $500 to spend. On the other hand I have done HDR and DV comparisons and the difference is very minimum to my eyes, at least not enough to pay extra money for a TV that supports it.

i bought this 4k blu ray player last month for 350€ .Upscaling 1080p to 4k is really incredible. i don't have good tv i'm waiting the end of this year for good price but i can tell upscaling is amazing and dts hd master audio decode is very good this is a new quality sound for me

Something you neglected to consider is the HDR tone mapping the UB820 offers. It's a game changer, and transforms regular HDR10 content into something closer to Dolby Vision.

Interesting video. Very informative. Wasn't really surprised at the results.

Pretty sure there's a toggle on Xbox for 24FPS support.

Wait, I thought you rip all of your Blu-Ray discs & save it on your personal server? You even did a video on the new server you set up for the new house.

The single was pure digital all the way to the monitor/TV. In the past, it was converted to analog and sent to the monitor/TV, so the player does make a difference. A comparable test was to use the composite analog output and see witch one has a better DAC.

I actually was excited to have an Series X and start collecting some 4k steelbooks BUT it was loud playing them discs, nothing horrible but you'd notice it in a quiet scene, got a Panasonic because reviews said it was whisper quiet (as well as image advantages) and it is indeed quiet. Whilst the image difference between the two would be very difficult for the average user to tell the difference but everyone will notice the disc spinning noise from the Xbox.

Great topic for a video. As someone with both an Xbox and PS5 for whom the 4K disc playback was a big selling point, I think I want to get a dedicated player at this point. It’s a shame that it’s such an afterthought in this latest generation. I miss the days when a console could be a reference quality movie player. My 60GB fat launch model PS3 wasn’t just my primary blu ray player for over a decade - it was my ONLY blu ray player. We had it so simple then!

Plouffe’s “They could tell!” And “They could not tell!” were hilarious!

Ub9000 owner here, and I have to say 3 years in its worth it. I run it through a Sony 4k projector onto a 132" screen (soon to be 150") and the added nuanced quality really shows up on such a large screen. Would recommend if youre into home theater

shout out to the editing team for all the extra stuff they packed into this one!

Two reasons I'm planning to buy a Panasonic UB820 (with a region-unlock modification): 1. HDR optimizer. It's a killer feature that lets you optimize the HDR playback for your display. So if you have an OLED like I do, you can set it to optimize the output for your not-quite-so-bright display. Higher-end TVs have similar features, but to my knowledge, none of them are as good as the UB820's optimizer, particularly for 4K Blu-rays. 2. Upscaling. When it comes to upscaling Blu-rays and DVDs to 4K, Panasonic's machines appear to be the cream of the crop. How do they compare to upscaling in Sony's flagship TVs? I'm not entirely sure. But until I can try one for myself, the UB820 will do fine. I have an LG UBK90, which I got for a great discount, because it was the cheapest player I could find at the time that supported automatic Dolby Vision switching. Cheaper 4K Blu-ray players, and most of Sony's from what I can tell, require you to manually enable and disable Dolby Vision, forcing you to verify that your discs have it before you change the setting. Unfortunately, the UBK90 has issues when changing layers on triple-layer 4K discs; when the layer change happens, the video can often freeze up like a scratched DVD. That's another reason I'm looking to switch to the Panasonic.

One thing I really love about the Xbox is that, compared to my other media devices (Roku and Fire TV), it has a TON of information about the HDMI connection.

There is also HLG, an HDR format that extends and behaves much like SDR. It's supported on KZfaq and is an interesting take compared to the other fixed standards.

I have a Bravia OLED and PS5... I could tell that Dolby vision was different when I first tried it with the test videos, but can't verify if it actually works (since the output format changes when you switch to media apps and doesn't tell you without having to go back to the tv settings) and which streaming services actually support the different formats. When you sit down together, it's very frustrating to waste time trying to figure out if all the settings are good when everyone else just wants to watch it regardless of the format.

I bought my Sony X-800 shortly after it was introduced. I purchased it because multiple reviewers said it was second only to Oppo's 4k Blu-ray player at deinterlacing and upscaling DVD and Blu-ray discs. (I'm sad that Oppo bailed out of high end players. I'll bet a modern Oppo player would be amazing.) My disc based collection consists of about 70% DVDs, 25% Blu-rays and 5% 4k Blu-rays. With the help of friends, I've compared the X800's performance at deinterlacing and upscaling done by over half a dozen 4K and standard Blu Ray players, deinterlacing and upscaling done internally by multiple 4k TVs and de-interlacing and upscaling by three different home computers. So far, the X800 hasn't been bested - period. In some cases the X800 does a noticeably better deinterlace-upscale than does the competition; in other cases it's hard to tell. None of my friends are gamers, so, no comparisons with gaming consoles. I'm sure deinterlacing and upscaling hardware has improved since my X-800 purchase. I'm sure my player has been bested by multiple late generation players. That's irrelevant to my point. Performance with 4k source material is only one performance parameter of a high end player. Top tier handling of non-4K material is, and likely will continue to be, my number one priority when it comes to spinning disk players because, as you pointed out, 4K material looks great regardless of the player. That isn't true for lower resolution and lower quality source discs.

@10:03 Ah, I see Linus is a fan of my boy Vincent! His tech reviews on panel displays are outstanding; but I usually stay for his one-liners!

Great review! Thank you.

I love how these videos answer questions that I want the answer for, but I'm too much of a layman to even know to ask the question

But we won’t be a fool after hearing this message from your sponsor!

The Sony X700 is a great stand alone player, at just around $200, and it does support SACD. You just have to manually switch Vision.

I remember using my Xbox and seeing a huge difference in quality from it vs a standard player. Must have been before they fixed it on the Xbox, but since I got a normal player, I haven't played a Blu-ray on my Xbox since then.

I got the Samsung k8500 free with my tv then I upgraded to the Panasonic 820 which I’ve had over 3yrs now since launch and I spotted the difference between the players straight away. I’m just a average joe with a love of films and I can clearly see the differences

Honestly the only concerning thing to me is frameskipping, not to say the other issues are invalid but personally I wouldn't mind

I LOVE my UB820. 4k Blu Rays are a great hobby and the qualify is unreal. It can be really fun to watch an old movie remastered in 4k. They look like they were made yesterday.

He man, this is just my second video of yours that I've watched (it got served up to me on my recommended page) and I want to say thanks for creating valuable content and a compelling, engaging and easy to understand way. I want to recognize that this is NOT easy to do, but you do a fantastic job of making it look easy. Kudos to you. Two videos I've seen: Was 3D TV actually poo? and this one. Both really great videos. Turns out, I actually own the Panasonic DPUB820 and my Sony VPL-XW7000ES arrives today. So, even though the projector doesn't support Dolby Vision or HDR10+, I'm hoping that at some point I can get a video processor before the projector.

Sony's UHD player also supports SACD and DVD Audio. but apparently you have to select the type of HDR manually unless it has been changed It also supports Dolby Vision

Only the 90’s kids remember beardless Linus

I bought a standalone 4k UHD player for this reason since I'm more of a cinema buff than a gamer. Thanks for explaining.

This super in depth look at 4k streaming hardware would be cool. Like, a few Smart TVs - samnsung, Sony, LG, etc, roku, fire, cromecast, and apple TV. Is it even worth it spend more on stand alone piece of 4K streaming hardware for a modern TV?

"they couldn't tell" this person needs a raise I chuckled very hearty

I was wondering if you were going to put the Xbox to output RGB and change the input source option on the TV to PC, so that way you can get proper 4:4:4 RGB @ 60hz. OR up to 120hz if you have a C9 :P. Less back and forth conversions on output. Movies are recorded usually in 4:2:2 but hey, it can still help.

Another Dolby Vision tip, if you're running a newer 4K Sony tv that supports it you need to go into the external input settings and make sure the HDMI receiving the Dolby Vision signal has Enhanced HDMI mode enabled, they're set to standard by default and will handle 4K resolution at Standard but not Dolby Vision unless set to Enhanced (Dolby Vision) HDMI mode.

If you are someone like me who prefers to watch movies and play games via physical media, and does both a lot, it makes sense to have a separate blu ray player. When I got my PS2 it became my introduction to DVD, and I initially used it as both a games console and a DVD player, but I started to notice that the picture and audio would often go out of sync so I ended up investing in a standalone DVD player that also upscaled to 1080p. Jump forward a few years and I got the PS3 and I gradually moved over to blu ray and as I was not about to go buying a separate blu ray player as they were hella expensive, it stayed as my blu ray player for it's entire life. Come the PS4 it was pretty much the same but I found that the more you used the loading system that Sony have used since the PS3, the quicker it started to go wrong and in the end my blu ray drive gave up. It was around this time that the Pro version came out so felt it was worth an upgrade as all I could play on the old one was digital or streaming. Of course, ridiculously despite it being a "4K" machine it did not come with a 4K drive, so I bit the bullet and invested in a rather expensive 4K blu ray player which was also multi region for standard blu ray. My thought process was that I wanted to be able to get 4K discs if necessary, and after the fuck up of my PS4's blu ray drive I no longer wanted to use my console for watching movies. It was in my opinion the right decision as these front loading slots on Playstations are prone to pack up with too much use, which is why my PS5 blu ray drive stopped accepting discs after only 4 months of usage (I have been playing it a lot due to being off sick for nearly two years). Not sure the quality of the Microsoft mechanisms, but I just wish Sont would go back to the traditional tray that PS2 used to have and pretty much every standalone player or PC has. This is the main reason I feel that playing disc based movies on a console is a bad move. Plus, while my PS5 was on it's holiday being fixed/replaced by Sony, I still had my PS4 for gaming and by standalone 4K blu ray player for movies.

Very informative!

Nvidia Shield (2019) is my personal choice. With Kodi (Maven version) it does DV with 4K remux files.

Finally, an explanation for those who are configuring their new oled screens and didnt understand crap about RGB, YCbCR... Thanks Linus, excellent video.

You're the top KZfaq channel in Canada? That's nuts. Who knew there would be a time when a channel about technology would be so popular. Nice job!

I used a series x for blurays until a few weeks ago when I got the UB820 but not for any video quality reasons. Aside from the added bonus of Dolby Vision support but because my xbox was being annoying with audio. The sync was rarely perfect and I had to change xbox audio settings constantly for no reason and I googled any and all fixes but it still wouldn't work. Since I got the dedicated player... 0 issues with that thankfully. And far less of me being angry at my xbox too.

I just wish the masses were more appreciative of physical media and that streaming didn't convey this idea that it's the future of media consumption when the quality is just not as good as if you had a disc

I wish we knew the reason why Microsoft hasnt implemented Dolby Vision for disc playback. Whether its a Dolby licensing (cost) decision, or if its simply buried in the list of enhancements and hasnt risen to the top yet? Personally I'd pay a licensing fee for DV in the same way I had to for the optional Dolby Atmos and DTS X apps.

For HDR images, look at 48 bit PNG files and tools. Straight 16 bit per channel RGB. But obviously not as heavily compressed as consumer video.

I think the YCBCR is the same as RGB. The difference is that the eye is very sensitive to light than color. YCBCR maintain these sensitivities by regulating the Y luminance and color (CB and CR) separately to compress the image efficiently. Great for realistic movies. In contrast RGB need more data and use both brightness and color for the same color channel. Another problem is that the DVD blue Ray disc use limited RGB and you need to consider this for TV and console conversion due to loss of quality of image in dark spots.

I ended up getting my 4k BluRay player (with remote) from a thrift store for $25. It's a Samsung UBD-K8500. Great little player.

Why did LTT stop making HDR videos, I really enjoyed that HDR video from a while back

I would love to see more content like this

If you puase it at 2:24 you can see a tuft of Jame's hair just under her hand and the opposite side there isn't. Also on the right side on Bond's shoulder you can see more colours and definition on the shoulder area.