4K/UHD Playback Issues (1 Viewer)

[Clinton McClure]

I know EXACTLY what that's like...

To cross over into the What Annoys You thread, I have a dedicated HT room and yet I spend the majority of my time in the living room watching things on a budget 1080P LCD because I get constantly interrupted when I’m trying to watch anything in the HT.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Received my replacement copy from Best Buy and played it until about halfway though; the problem that plagued my first disc -- the picture freezing and audio dropouts around the time Diane is making breakfast for the kids -- didn't reveal itself on this new disc. HOWEVER, the same thing happened the first time I played my original copy, and then the issues began after watching it for a second and third time...so this disc MAY still do that. I'll have to watch it yet again to make sure.

 

[willyTass]

Get the UK or German pressings . With the soaring USD u can pick em up for a song

they are pressed in Europe not Mexico and almost never cause me grief like what you’ve described

in fact 95 % of my discs I now import from Japan because of the scratched discs and freezing discs I was getting from america. my heart skips a beat when I have to open up a Kino or archive disc these days the QC is so poor

the Japanese 4k’s have not once frozen in any of my 4k players and I’ve bought over 30 of them. And you’ll never have to wipe a Japanese disc because their cases are far far superior to the garbage cases in American discs

 

[dpippel]

I don't know what kind of bad luck you guys are having or why, but in the past 3 years I've only had one problem with 4K UHD disc playback in my UB9000 out of well over 100 titles watched, and none at all with Blu-ray playback. I'm not saying that these issues aren't happening with your setups, but I wonder why there's such a huge difference between my experience and yours.

 

[JohnRice]

Once I started cleaning all new discs once with a microfiber cloth, and upgraded from the my initial cheap Phillips player to a Panasonic 820, I haven't had a single glitch on any UHD disc.

 

[Kyle_D]

I received Criterion's World of Wong Kar-Wai box set over the weekend. The packaging is beautiful, but unfortunately the discs are placed in sleeves that press the disc surfaces to the coated packaging material, which absorbs fingerprint oil and traps dust and other debris. Every single disc was smudged and dusty out of the box, and several required multiple washings before they would back up. After running searches, it appears many customers experienced playback issues with this set, and I'm not surprised.

Sleeve packaging is the worst for Blu-rays and UHDs. I wish studios would abandon it.

 

[Malcolm R]

The Classic Monsters Vol. 1 UHD set I just received from Universal is the same. I pulled out Dracula and it had some light smudges and scuffs that I cleaned off. It seemed to play OK. I didn't bother to examine or clean Frankenstein, but that also seemed to play OK. I may watch the other two sometime this week.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Watched the replaced Poltergeist disc for the second time; no issues. Still doesn't negate the possibility of this NEVER happening, because it's happened to me with other titles such as Bad Boys for Life (where the freezing or dropout problems wouldn't begin until the disc was watched three or more times, which is just beyond weird).

 

[Kaskade1309]

I don't know what kind of bad luck you guys are having or why, but in the past 3 years I've only had one problem with 4K UHD disc playback in my UB9000 out of well over 100 titles watched, and none at all with Blu-ray playback. I'm not saying that these issues aren't happening with your setups, but I wonder why there's such a huge difference between my experience and yours.

I'm sure it's happening to other owners across the world, as well, who are just not reporting it and/or "just dealing with it."

There seems to be a quality control disparity between batches of these so-called "reference grade" players, too, wherein some owners (like me) have seemingly received units with noisy tray mechanisms while others have reported absolute vault-like silky smooth SILENCE from their decks. From the day I unpacked my UB9000, the disc tray would close accompanied by a "scratchy" roughness that eventually turned into an audible (from 12 feet away in our case, mind you) and quite offputting "cogging vibration" noise -- the oddest thing about this is that the tray WON'T do this when the drawer OPENS (upon opening, the tray slides out the way you'd expect a player of this caliber and price to do so -- quietly and velvety smooth).

Owners in several forums, including the guy who began the official owner's thread over on AVS, have reported this "scratchiness" to the 9000's drawer mechanism, which is really offputting for what this thing costs and the enthusiast market it's targeting. On the flip side of that coin, we have owners like you -- and there are plenty -- who have reported nothing but trouble-free smooth sailing from day one with the machine. I suppose, like with the Poltergeist UHD disc being discussed, there are just batches of these things going out defective in some way or another.

 

[dpippel]

From the day I unpacked my UB9000, the disc tray would close accompanied by a "scratchy" roughness that eventually turned into an audible (from 12 feet away in our case, mind you) and quite offputting "cogging vibration" noise -- the oddest thing about this is that the tray WON'T do this when the drawer OPENS (upon opening, the tray slides out the way you'd expect a player of this caliber and price to do so -- quietly and velvety smooth).

It's a moot point now of course, but just out of curiosity why didn't you return it for a replacement or a refund when you first noticed that tray behavior? I think I would have, considering the cost of the UB9000.

 

[Kaskade1309]

It's a moot point now of course, but just out of curiosity why didn't you return it for a replacement or a refund when you first noticed that tray behavior? I think I would have, considering the cost of the UB9000.

You're right, I should have -- but let me tell you why, at the time, I didn't.

When I looked at some YouTube videos and read some comments in forums, it seemed as if some were suggesting this "roughness" of the tray track was "normal" and just "the way it was" in terms of how Panasonic engineered this thing (always seemed iffy to me, but we'll let that go for the moment). Once the aforementioned cogging/vibration noise began, the unit was already out of warranty (the factory warranty on these things is a complete and utter joke).

Additionally, I had just gone through this with a previous UHD BD player I owned, a Cambridge Audio CXUHD (which is basically an Oppo UDP-203 clone without the analog output section), wherein the unit began to develop a loud "ticking" noise around the disc tray area but only when playing back DVDs. I sent the unit into the repair center THREE TIMES under Cambridge's warranty, and they could never duplicate nor fix the problem (this was the reason we ended up with the UB9000, because there were no other premium disc spinners on the market at the time, given that Pioneer wasn't selling the LX500 anymore, Oppo was essentially defunct and Reavon hadn't arrived).

I didn't want to go through that again with a repair center, so I just lived with the noise.

Want to hear the real kicker in all this (and something that not even the most seasoned of enthusiasts in the hobby nor professionals I have reached out to could explain)? Over time, the behavior of my UB9000's disc tray evolved to the point that if I close the open drawer immediately, the vibration/cogging WILL occur, but if I wait a bit and then close it, the noise WON'T.

In other words, if I finish a disc, take it out and then immediately close the tray, the rough cogging is heard, but if I wait say five minutes or more, that vibration won't be heard (or it's minimal).

How's that for a story a couple of weeks before Halloween?

At any rate, my initial reply to you was in response to your sentiment of

I don't know what kind of bad luck you guys are having or why

as I was merely attempting to explain why there may be some widespread variances. Indeed, many of us have not been as lucky as owners like you, for whatever reason.

 

[Malcolm R]

Not sure if this is exclusive to UHD. I rewatched my blu-ray of Malignant last Friday and had a freeze-up around the 30-minute mark that I don't recall being an issue on my first viewing back last March.

Of course this was right during a particularly tense/surprising moment in the film. Couldn't be during some stretch of boring dialogue.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Gave this a final spin for the season, being that I originally received a defective copy from Best Buy, to see if it would act up after three plays (because many times this happens with UHD media for some reason), and it played with no issues.

 

[Bryan^H]

I noticed a slight "grinding noise" on my Panasonic UB9000.

It plays all my discs properly, but the "noise" bothers me.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me. For the next 5 years or so, I'm going to spend countless hours with exhaustive, limitless paragraphs on why that "noise" should not be. Adding up all the hours spent dwelling on it, it will probably equal a years worth of my life. But I have to express my concern of this "noise". It just should be quiet......right?

If anyone has any guesses as to what is causing this, or solutions to ease my mind please note I will most likely ignore it, and continue to be bothered by this "noise" in my Panasonic UB9000. Thanks for all your help everyone I appreciate it.

Now I noticed a slight "rumble" vibration when the disc tray closes. It isn't enough to bother me, but it is there, so anyone....

 

[YANG]

hmmm...
the grinding noise sounds like my very old PHILIPS BDP7750 whenever the disc starts to spin in tray. however, the rumbling tray movement , might signify some where short in the tray rail where could cause the not so smooth movement.

 

[Kaskade1309]

hmmm...
the grinding noise sounds like my very old PHILIPS BDP7750 whenever the disc starts to spin in tray. however, the rumbling tray movement , might signify some where short in the tray rail where could cause the not so smooth movement.

Yang,

Thanks for your thoughts on this; it's hard to describe what I'm hearing, but it has gotten progressively worse the last week or so. I am going to attempt to take some sound clips and share them here to see if anyone has any opinions, but I was actually told by someone I reached out to who owns a home theater consulting firm (and who is a kind of Oppo player expert on some forums) that it could be something got on the rails of the drawer mechanism (dirt, debris, etc.), and this is causing the grinding/cogging issue. When I asked him why, if this was true, the drawer WOULDN'T make the noise (or would make it much more subtly) if I let the tray sit open for a few minutes as opposed to shutting it immediately after inserting or removing a disc (wherein the noise occurs instantly, like clockwork, every time), he said it may be that this debris or dirt is "settling down" when the drawer/tray is left open for a while, thus not causing the noises I'm hearing.

I don't know if I buy that, but I suppose it can be...

It's just the darndest thing -- I can accept that certain UHD 4K discs cause these players' mechanisms to "spaz out" a bit, making them vibrate lightly or exude a whirring/spinning up noise (due to their playback velocity), but what I am experiencing with this $1K player is unacceptable. The disc tray literally vibrates and shakes as it closes, causing a weird "chuffing"/"cogging" noise that is TOTALLY off-putting for a premium, all-metal deck like this; perhaps even weirder is the fact that this DOESN'T occur when the tray OPENS. Upon opening, the tray is smooth as butter and almost dead quiet -- the way it SHOULD behave always for a unit of the 9000's caliber. But when it CLOSES, that's when the loud vibration/cogging occurs, and if that doesn't happen, then the sound of the tray is just rough in a general sense, making a kind of "scratchy" sound as it slams shut. It was NEVER dead quiet out of the box, but I didn't return it under the joke of a warranty because online research indicated to me that this was somewhat normal for these Panasonics...that they are NOT 100-percent quiet and smooth in terms of disc tray movement.

As a member implied in a post above, I should have maybe looked into this before the useless warranty ran out, but I wasn't experiencing the aggressive shuddering/cogging with the tray out of the box -- that seemed to occur almost to the day the warranty was done.

Coincidence?

I am considering bringing the player to a private shop to have someone look at it and analyze the problem, but I loathe the thought of having to remove this heavy deck from the shelf it's on (it's kind of "planted in place" already with its heavy-duty stabilizing feet) and drag it somewhere.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Where is Olivia's post?