Panasonic DP-UB820EB 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player

In the past I have always gone for middle of the range blu ray/ 4k players players thinking they were a good mix of picture quality and price. My aging Arcam CD player had just given up the ghost so after some research I wanted to see if I combine the two players. I prized my wallet open with a lot of sweating and hit the buy now button.From the outset I was not disappointed, unpacking it you could see and feel the quality, after an easy setup I placed a 4k lord of the rings in, the colours popped out of the screen hues were rendered perfectly, with even the fastest scenes tracking without issue and smoothly. When it came to dark scenes it pulled out so much information while still keeping the scenes inky black.Only one slight negative if you can call it that, is the menus are slightly slower than anticipated.Putting a CD in I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and depth of the sound stage. A worthy buy and I am happy I took the plunge. Needs decent equipment to bring out its fullest potential.

I have owned this player since December 2020 and have had no issues with disc playback at all unlike my previous Sony UDP-X800 4K UHD Blu-ray player which I had to return twice due to disc freezing.Picture and audio quality are outstanding and disc playback has been 100% reliable which are the most important features of a disc player obviously. The player starts and loads discs quickly, it is relatively quiet in operation and I like that it has a front panel LED display unlike almost every other Blu-ray player I've seen.The only negatives are the cheap plasticky build quality (the Sony X800 definitely trumps it in that department as that thing is metal and built like a tank!), the tacky poorly laid out remote (I replaced mine with the far superior one for the Panasonic UB9000 player, also available from Amazon) and the incredibly poor built in apps (which should not be a concern for anyone with a modern smart TV as its apps are far superior and updated more frequently).A good solid player and second only to the Panasonic UB9000 with its much better build quality and the one I would have bought if it did not cost almost £1,000!

Well, even Oppo isn't Oppo anymore, and that's sad for us enthusiasts, but I purchased this Panasonic to take its place. It does come close, but there's one or two things which really make it feel cheap. Whilst others might have more esoteric critique, I just have 2 issues with the unit.Now, it's a GOOD player. Possibly fantastic at this price point, but the two areas it lacks really spoil it for me, though there's possibly nothing better on the market in the sub-£500 range to beat it.1) It can be quite noisy to start up when reading and caching / chapter searching a disk. The Oppo was practically silent at this, as well as fast. Now, whilst the Panasonic is fast, it certainly isn't silent, and reminds me of my old floppy disk drives as it grinds and creaks its way to playback. It just sounds cheap.2) This is a big problem for me : I watch movies piecemeal, and often pause them - sometimes for days - before resuming from the precise moment I paused whenever I want. This is a much more convenient way of resuming playback than the playback-resume function authored (if you're lucky!) into the disks themselves, which often requires a lot of waiting-time as the disk is reloaded, the obligatory anti-piracy and warning pages endured (which you can't skip through), and then after a few minutes you get to resume what you were watching. And of course, if the disk WASN'T authored with a resume function, you have to go searching, and typically this will involve re-watching from the beginning of the last chapter you think you stopped at (if you can remember!).The Panasonic does NOT pause like an Oppo. After 5 minutes of being on pause, the unit automatically shuts down, even if eco-mode and auto shutdown are both disabled. As of writing this review, there's no way to avoid this in the settings. It's done I believe because the pause is not actually disengaging the laser, but is continuously running it live, and thus creating a risk of burnout. It's a safety feature, but the truth is it's a software kludge intended to overcome a design flaw which shouldn't be there in the first place.However, all of the above being said, once the player gets going and does what it's supposed to do (play your DVD's Blu Rays and 4k UHD HDR content), its picture and audio quality is OUTSTANDING.At its present price point, I'm considering it a stop-gap measure to fill the void between my old Oppo and the next gen of high end players, but IF I can get used to its shortcomings, I may just learn to love it. This is high audio and videophile praise, folks so make of this what you will!

Believe me when I say this - the Panasonic DP-UB150 is THE very best affordable 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player on the market. This was the first player I bought for 4K viewing, and can confirm that is by far the best. Playback is both solid and reliable, so you can purchase with confidence. The player is nice and compact too. Remote is also of good size and quality, and always responsive.Playability is phenomenal. The picture & sound quality are second to none. Really quite impressive.I've tried and tested the model which come along after this one, and it wasn't a patch on the DP-UB150.Oh, and Panasonic 4K players beat Sony's efforts, hands down (my Sony 4K player barely lasted a month before it packed up working!).The Panasonic DP-UB150 is recommended 100% 👌Picture Quality ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️Sound ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️Overall rating ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I bought this model following its What Hifi review and award. It replaced an older Panasonic and the interface is much improved, though not much faster. Picture quality is great with both ordinary bluray and 4k discs. Only app I've used is Netflix and that works just as it should. The 4k is great.Only word of warning; my surround amp is an older Denon model and the only audio route I could get to work was the optical link. Using the separate hdmi audio output just confused the hell out of it.The unit looks very sleek and the power and drawer open/close buttons on the top are very useful. The remote resembles every other Panasonic dvd unit remote so is quite good to use.Overall, a great unit. But it is really pricey. The difference between this and my old unit is this plays 4k discs but for more than double the price!