Blu-ray Player Reviews

During my test, I discovered that the DP-UB9000 was sensitive to fingerprints on Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, so I recommend that you check for this beforehand to avoid annoying pixelized image breakup and disc playback freeze. Another downside is that the front panel display provides only the elapsed time when playing video discs. To find chapter information, you need to call up an onscreen menu.

Video Performance
The Panasonic added some edge enhancement to lower-resolution 1080i and 1080p sources when upconverting them to 4K. This effect was clearly visible on a sharpness test pattern, but only when viewed from closer than 2-3 feet. The Panasonic otherwise cleanly deinterlaced 1080i content, and its luma and chroma resolution were both excellent. The player wouldn't play back Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk on disc in full 4K, 60p, HDR, BT.2020, 4:2:2, 10-bit format. But Billy Lynn has been out for two years and remains the only HDR Ultra HD disc yet released in 60p; there's no sign of any others. (Oppo's now-discontinued UDP-203 player had no issue playing the same disc.)

Panasonic's HDR Optimizer subtly darkened the image with most HDR10 discs, though not enough to trouble me. The upside was that it reduced peak luminance clipping, which brought out more detail in bright highlights. Batman vs. Superman features plenty of lightning flashes and explosions that jump out incessantly from the film's otherwise dark, gloomy cinematography. With the HDR Optimizer engaged, the image brilliantly displayed all of the movie's Sturm und Drang while also highlighting fine details such as Bruce Wayne/ Batman's (Ben Affleck) trendy facial stubble.

The same held true when viewing the far superior (as a movie) Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, the player's HDR10 Metadata screen cited the maximum light level for Mad Max as 9,919 nits. Using the HDR Optimizer menu selections described above, the Panasonic mapped this down to 500 nits and the results were eye-popping.

I vacillated in my preference for using the HDR Optimizer vs. relying exclusively on the Sony OLED TV's own dynamic tone mapping. The latter clipped visibly on bright highlights, but usually in ways that weren't immediately obvious. Highlights often had more punch on the OLED without the Optimizer, with only a small amount of detail sacrificed. The results here might well vary with the peak luminance available from a display. For my setup, I ultimately chose to go with using the Panasonic's HDR Optimizer, but it was a trade-off rather than a slam-dunk when viewing with the Sony OLED.

The DP-UB9000 offers exceptional overall video performance with both Ultra HD and standard HD Blu-ray discs. Its unique features aside, I can't definitively state that it offers better SDR and HDR performance than other premium players such as my Oppo UDP-203 or Panasonic's less expensive DP-UD820 (which I did not have on-hand for comparison). But I doubt that any current player on the market can do better.

Audio Performance
The DP-UB9000 offers a range of audio features you won't find in Panasonic's lower-cost DP-UB820—or at least not implemented at the same perfectionist level. Most of the DP-UB9000's extensive audio EQ tweaks were of no interest to me (including multiple "Remaster" and "Digital Tube Sound" selections—audiophiles may pause as the irony of "Digital Tube Sound" sinks in!). And in any case, their effective- ness will depend on the specific audio system. What I primarily want to discuss here is the player's basic sound quality.

I'll limit my comments to audio performance using an HDMI connection for movies and a coaxial digital one for music. The Panasonic's other outputs, including analog, will be of interest to some, but every modern AVR and pre-pro I know of will first convert an analog audio input to digital before it performs any internal processing (room EQ, tone controls, bass management, etc.). With an analog output from the player, the required additional A/D and D/A audio conversions would likely make moot any comments about sound quality into an AVR.

Oblivion is one of my favorite Ultra HD demo and test discs. The soundtrack is mind-blowing, and for a movie that (mostly) avoids big action scenes, it offers dynamics to spare. From the opening moment as Jack walks across the catwalk to his waiting bubble-copter, to the ebb and flow of music in the final encounter, M83's outstanding electro-orchestral score wasn't shortchanged in any way by the Panasonic (supported here by a system consisting of a Marantz AV8805 pre-pro, Parasound and Outlaw amps, a mix of Monitor Audio Gold and Silver speakers, and a Revel B15 subwoofer).

For testing the player's coaxial digital output, I used two-channel music on CD with the system pared down to just the Marantz AV8805, the Parasound amp (Halo A 52+), Monitor Audio Gold 300 G5 speakers, and no subwoofer. You can't get sound out of the Panasonic's coaxial digital output (nor, presumably, the optical digital one) if the HDMI audio output is also connected. The only way I found to activate the digital output was to physically disconnect the HDMI audio cable. This situation is inconvenient to say the least for those of us who want to use the player's digital output for two-channel music and HDMI for audio/video. But the inconvenience isn't unique to the Panasonic, since the Oppo players have the same issue.

That said, audio performance when using the Panasonic's coaxial digital output was superb and sounded marginally more open and transparent than when the player's HDMI audio output was used for music playback. There's another feature called High Clarity Sound that's directly acces- sible via a dedicated button on the remote. Push this once and some of the player's video circuits that might interfere with audio get shut down, though the disc directory remains displayed onscreen (assuming you're using a screen). Push it a second time and it turns off the screen output as well. The sonic changes here were so subtle, however, that I might have been imagining them.

Conclusion
The undeniably complex settings necessitated by the DP-UB9000's astonishing range of features aside, this Panasonic is, to my knowledge, unequalled by any other video disc player on the market. And while it's a shame that it doesn't play SACDs, it will still give any high-end music disc player a run for its money. Panasonic deserves plenty of credit for pressing on in these days of waning disc sales to bring this technical tour de force to market.