How do you explain your love of physical media in an era of streaming? (1 Viewer)

[OliverK]

Well, that depends on what you're looking for in a 4K UHD player. If you're primarily interested in high-quality video playback, the UB820 and UB9000 can't be beaten. I put both of these up against my Oppo UDP-203 and felt that both Pannies produced more detailed 4K and Blu-ray playback with my OLED display. It was somewhat subtle but definitely noticeable. The Oppo was slightly soft in comparison.

From what I have seen all OPPO, Sony and Samsung players employ no sharpening with sharpness set to zero while Panasonic is still employing sharpening at the zero sharpness setting so they require a negative sharpness setting in order not to introduce artificial sharpness. I seem to remember it was something like -3 but it has been a long time since I checked.

By now it has been pointed out to Panasonic more than once and they had many firmware versions released where this could have been addressed for multiple players but the issue is still there. I can only assume that this is a deliberate effort to make people think that their players are sharper even with no sharpening applied and when these players handle the upscaling they also add some extra ringing due to their upscaling algorithm.

 

[dpippel]

From what I have seen all OPPO, Sony and Samsung players employ no sharpening with sharpness set to zero while Panasonic is still employing sharpening at the zero sharpness setting so they require a negative sharpness setting in order not to introduce artificial sharpness. I seem to remember it was something like -3 but it has been a long time since I checked.

By now it has been pointed out to Panasonic more than once and they had many firmware versions released where this could have been addressed for multiple players but the issue is still there. I can only assume that this is a deliberate effort to make people think that their players are sharper even with no sharpening applied and when these players handle the upscaling they also add some extra ringing due to their upscaling algorithm.

Yep, this was taken into account when I did my comparisons.

 

[YANG]

...While I generally agree that some companies or other will keep making players (at whatever great or small scale) for a long time to come, I wouldn't assume player quality will remain all that good though. As it is, there seems no solid replacement for Oppo in the marketplace so far for instance (unless one counts the couple more expensive, audiophile-centric ones I guess, but I haven't really paid attention to those).

I haven't checked, but does Denon still make BD players and have they even ever made 4K players at all? They used to be roughly what Oppo became (and I guess supplanted them)... though maybe w/ somewhat lesser servicing support -- and the one $400-500 Denon universal DVD player I had started flaking out on DVDs w/in maybe 4-5 years soon after I jumped upto BDs w/ a PS3 IIRC, but it did keep playing CDs, including SACDs, perfectly fine... though I haven't used it in several years now (after I upgraded that home office setup to a gently used Oppo 95... though primarily for stereo music playback on good headphones)...
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_Man_

the only surviving big mainstream marques that still churning out optical disc players are SONY and PANASONIC. if you noticed, aesthetically, despite model numbers advances, PANASONIC players looks the same on the entry level models, while the mids such as UB820 and UB9000/4(in Europe) remains the same. SONY's machines are all the same since their launch, no much advancement on looks as well as internal structure and builds... with exception a couple of years back, the m2 that seems to refine on some components or software.

DENON's Blu-Ray initial offering of BD players was just as an addition of an component/part to their hifi gears, just like Marantz. then, when PHILIPS stopped making players after their BDP9700, DENON and Marantz stopped making players as well while Pioneer continues with their last 2 premium makes, the LX500 and 800. that bears the internals identical in certain percentage that the Oppos have. while they kicked out the making of their entry level makes.

DENON's last BDPlayer, the DN-500BD for "professional USE" and bears in many ways the same look and functionality as the TASCAM BD Player. while the TASCAM player had came out with UHD replacement model, DENON doesn't, but rather come out with a mark2 "refinement".

on Magnetar and Reavon, both are brands of Group Archisoft that owns Zappiti as well. you know? Zappiti? the initial maker of NAS Media players that rips optical media content and stores into the harddrives that built in their Zappiti streamer/player? Reavon is a rebadge marque that tells consumers, "You're backed with Protection Warranties if you buy our products", in comparison to Chinese original brand GIEC... which their brand is pasted upon.
Magnetar is a brand that have little engineering kicked in, on aesthetics design that make 'em look better, more professional.
(i'm still waiting to see if Zidoo is going such a move as Zappiti, to come out with their own optical disc players to meet market demands)
however when both "dress" are stripped off, the internals would look the same to another other Chinese makes, be it the Oppo clones, or Original Design Maker- GIEC... all bearing the MT8581 systems, that tuned to behave differently with different badge, some plays SACD some doesn't, depending on Audio DAC employed in the system.
example? TASCAM UHD player is MT8581 as well... but don't play SACD. by the way, i couldn't tell who's the original design owner to the professional use players, and who came out first... was it TASCAM or DENON?

 

[YANG]

The high-end Panasonic players are widely considered to be the replacement for Oppo... ...

the "BEST" Audiophile-Grade product developed that's not MT8581 based.
SONY should develop their new wave of products to replace their X#00mk2 and complement to their recent introduction of new AVRs.

 

[YANG]

The enthusiast community generally recommends the 820 as a successor to the Oppo.

only as UHD video player, not audio... where Panasonic players is crippled on... SACD compatibility.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

There will probably also be optical drives made primarily for computers, so even if no (particularly) good standalones are made anymore, one might well be able to go w/ some sorta HTPC (whether DIY or turnkey) or could probably just opt to rip everything for max quality local NAS streaming (w/ ever cheaper computing storage, etc costs) or the like -- maybe someone might even eventually offer affordable (enough) paid service for doing substantial library/collection rips perhaps for those of us not inclined to do so for ourselves (for whatever reasons)...

What I'd really like to see is someone take a really good shot at doing what Vudu tried w/ their Disc-to-Digital program, but give us bit-perfect copies (and maybe also optionally offer upgrades) that we can actually store on our own local NAS if we want. That'd save us the hassle of ripping or the like (for the vast majority of our libraries... w/ fairly few exceptions perhaps that we can then just rip for ourselves)...

_Man_

 

[YANG]

I think VCR and laser disc is not a valid comparison to DVD or Blu Ray.

The quality is far superior to those technologies.

Technology has caught up where movies can be watched at home similar to what you can get in the cinema at least in relation to image and sound.

Screen size might be another issue and not relevant to our matter at hand here.

There is no significant demand for VHS or laser disc because the consumer can choose from a superior product (blu ray & DVD) at reasonable prices.

There is still demand for vinyl and vinyl players...

Vinyl and Cassette format doesn't affect much by mastering... in optical disc sense, ADD vs AAD vs DDD, or 16bits vs 24bits stuff, with exception of XRCD vs SACD though.

each tech have their prime in time. i started my video journey with VHS. after my short military life, when i came out to work, my LaserDisc life starts in 1992 and ended roughly in 2002 when LaserDiscs stopped released with newer titles. by 2002, Plasma TVs had already been sold in the market since 1997, my adoption of composite video output DVD player starts roughly in 2001 while my LCDTV life starts much later roughly in 2010...

today, cheap under USD$50 DVD players comes with 1080p/i upscaling and HDMI outputs, while a 50inch 4K TVs can be had the price i paid for a 20(US)/21(UK)inch CRT TV in the past.

this is what most would refer to as... ADVANCEMENT.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

What I'd really like to see is someone take a really good shot at doing what Vudu tried w/ their Disc-to-Digital program, but give us bit-perfect copies (and maybe also optionally offer upgrades) that we can actually store on our own local NAS if we want. That'd save us the hassle of ripping or the like (for the vast majority of our libraries... w/ fairly few exceptions perhaps that we can then just rip for ourselves)...

_Man_

That’s not going to be possible in the United States. The DMCA law forbids the breaking of encryption - even for making backup copies of material you own - so any company offering such a service would be in immediate legal jeopardy.

I can’t imagine there’s much of a market for such a service. The vast majority of the general public happily gave up disc ownership in favor of subscription streaming and digital rentals and purchases. That was their version of hiring someone to rip their discs. If the general public doesn’t want to deal with inexpensive and easily used discs, they surely are not going to want to deal with expensive and difficult to use media servers.

 

[Mike Frezon]

If you have pets in the house, pet hair and/or dander can easily make it onto discs or inside the player. Same for dust and microscopic debris.

I'm just going to report that we usually have two or three Golden Retrievers n our household (plus others which will visit on a regular basis) and I can attest that I have had to send my Oppo 203 in for repair after it stopped working. It turned out that it just needed a MAJOR cleaning. But until I got the word, I was concerned if I would be needing to purchase a different player (and this was after Oppo had gotten out of business).

I used to keep my player close to the floor in my set-up. Not any more. It is now much higher. I'm sure golden hair and dander still find their way into the machine (because they find their way into EVERYTHING else!). But, so far, so good.

Here's what I can be dealing with on "brush day" from just one dog:

But, thankfully, Ernie was home when the player was returned and signed for the package!

 

[Indy Guy]

The superior quality of reel to reel sound recordings was similar to the quality advantage of BR's & 4K's.
Reel to reel quality sound was delivered in two formats...3.75 & 7.5 ips...the higher speed had twice the capacity for analog quality and most often exceeded the corresponding Lp albums.
I felt the Akai GX 77 was the high water mark for consumer recorders. The way it handled tape was not to be found on any other machine. They stopped production 40 years ago and the RR tape format is considered obsolete. However, it is very easy to pick up a working unit on eBay and there are also vintage equipment repair sites to keep the players running.
I picked up this brand new looking GX 77 in my projector rack, placing it dead center because it looks so cool...especially when playing! My vintage tape collection has tapes dating from the early 50's and they play perfectly without the surface noise common to LPs. Ironically older tapes often sound better because newer ones from the 80's used the slower speed to save tape!
So looking down the road 40 years...BD and 4K should still be sexy enough to support a viable closet industry in players and media as a videophiles preferred format.
If you have a spare $250 laying around, you can take home an original 1972 soundtrack of American Graffiti (extremely rare). I can almost guarantee it will sound better than any other format currently for sale!

 

[OliverK]

Yep, this was taken into account when I did my comparisons.

Then you are one of the few persons who know. The ringing that is introduced by 1080p to 2160p/4k upscaling will of course always give an impression of added sharpness although it is really an artefact. I have seen a number of Panasonic players and they are usually set to sharpness zero which makes well known (to me) menus in movies already look sharpened asnd more so when they also do the upscaling.

Another thing they do is that they boost the frequency of the chroma channel so that it has a higher amplitude than the spec which adds some chroma ringing that cannot be defeated entirely and they employ different scaling than what the spec demands. Usually this is seen as an advantage but signals are definitely not handled according to the specs in any setting.

Personally I do not have an issue with all kinds of funny stuff being available in addition to a proper source direct output signal but not the way that Panasonic is doing it as they only offer "their way" of doing things. This is a shame as right now they offer the only enthusiast player on the market from one of the big brands after all others have left or never entered that market.

 

[OliverK]

I'm just going to report that we usually have two or three Golden Retrievers n our household (plus others which will visit on a regular basis) and I can attest that I have had to send my Oppo 203 in for repair after it stopped working. It turned out that it just needed a MAJOR cleaning. But until I got the word, I was concerned if I would be needing to purchase a different player (and this was after Oppo had gotten out of business).

I used to keep my player close to the floor in my set-up. Not any more. It is now much higher. I'm sure golden hair and dander still find their way into the machine (because they find their way into EVERYTHING else!). But, so far, so good.

Here's what I can be dealing with on "brush day" from just one dog:

But, thankfully, Ernie was home when the player was returned and signed for the package!

It is very easy to open the OPPO including the drive (only some small screws holding the top cover of the drive) and I suggest that you take a peek from time to time - longer hairs within the disc transport could cause damage to the drive as it has lots of moving parts.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Gosh, I can't even seem to easily find out the current time mark during playback (nor how much time left), LOL -- maybe I'm missing something w/ how I programmed my Harmony remote, but I just haven't been able to do that at all on my 420

There is a button on my Panny 820 that will cycle through time display options - - I think it's something like "display" or "info". I would have to dig out my remote to verify, as I also have a Harmony remote (and have that function assigned to the "info" button). The 420 probably has the same button.

 

[RICK BOND]

I Love both physical and digital ! The same with my Music. I have Vinyl, Cd's, and Amazon Music Unlimited, and Youtube Music.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

@ManW_TheUncool , I checked the activity for my Panny 820 on my Harmony 650 and 655 remotes, and the command you are looking to map to a button to cycle through displaying time remaining is " status".

 

[Mike Frezon]

It is very easy to open the OPPO including the drive (only some small screws holding the top cover of the drive) and I suggest that you take a peek from time to time - longer hairs within the disc transport could cause damage to the drive as it has lots of moving parts.

I think, Oliver, that sounds like a smart decision.

 

[jcroy]

The superior quality of reel to reel sound recordings was similar to the quality advantage of BR's & 4K's.
Reel to reel quality sound was delivered in two formats...3.75 & 7.5 ips...the higher speed had twice the capacity for analog quality and most often exceeded the corresponding Lp albums.
I felt the Akai GX 77 was the high water mark for consumer recorders. The way it handled tape was not to be found on any other machine. They stopped production 40 years ago and the RR tape format is considered obsolete. However, it is very easy to pick up a working unit on eBay and there are also vintage equipment repair sites to keep the players running.
I picked up this brand new looking GX 77 in my projector rack, placing it dead center because it looks so cool...especially when playing! My vintage tape collection has tapes dating from the early 50's and they play perfectly without the surface noise common to LPs. Ironically older tapes often sound better because newer ones from the 80's used the slower speed to save tape!
So looking down the road 40 years...BD and 4K should still be sexy enough to support a viable closet industry in players and media as a videophiles preferred format.
If you have a spare $250 laying around, you can take home an original 1972 soundtrack of American Graffiti (extremely rare). I can almost guarantee it will sound better than any other format currently for sale!

On a tangent, wich may sound really silly and dumb.

Back in the day, I always wanted a reel-to-reel (R2R) tape machine. For whatever strange reasons or perceptions, I thought that R2R tapes could be played backwards easily.

During 1980s, there was all this silly talk in the media about backwards masked secret messages on rock albums. Since I didn't want to ruin my vinyl records, I thought recording them to R2R would be an easy way to played them backwards to search for "satanic messages". For example, such as "satan eats cheez whiz" in Weird Al Yankovic's song "nature trail to hell".

 

[Jeffrey D]

The superior quality of reel to reel sound recordings was similar to the quality advantage of BR's & 4K's.
Reel to reel quality sound was delivered in two formats...3.75 & 7.5 ips...the higher speed had twice the capacity for analog quality and most often exceeded the corresponding Lp albums.
I felt the Akai GX 77 was the high water mark for consumer recorders. The way it handled tape was not to be found on any other machine. They stopped production 40 years ago and the RR tape format is considered obsolete. However, it is very easy to pick up a working unit on eBay and there are also vintage equipment repair sites to keep the players running.
I picked up this brand new looking GX 77 in my projector rack, placing it dead center because it looks so cool...especially when playing! My vintage tape collection has tapes dating from the early 50's and they play perfectly without the surface noise common to LPs. Ironically older tapes often sound better because newer ones from the 80's used the slower speed to save tape!
So looking down the road 40 years...BD and 4K should still be sexy enough to support a viable closet industry in players and media as a videophiles preferred format.
If you have a spare $250 laying around, you can take home an original 1972 soundtrack of American Graffiti (extremely rare). I can almost guarantee it will sound better than any other format currently for sale!

You’re likely right that disc players will be available for the foreseeable future, but I got a little paranoid about this issue this morning, and bought a couple of spare UHD players as backups- one Sony, and one Panasonic. Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.

 

[jcroy]

You’re likely right that disc players will be available for the foreseeable future, but I got a little paranoid about this issue this morning, and bought a couple of spare UHD players as backups- one Sony, and one Panasonic. Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.

Heh.

I do this every now and then, though not for standalone disc players.

Every time I go shopping at nearby thrift shops, I'll pick up old computer dvd-rom and bluray-rom drives I find for around $4 a pop or less.

(This may sound really dumb). Before the pandemic when I use to semi-regularly shop for dvds/blurays at offline retailers like bestbuy, wallymart, costco, etc ..., I would also drop by a computer store and buy a new dvd-rom drive for $20 a pop whenever I also purchased a large 20+ discs set(s) typically a complete (or partial) tv series.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

You’re likely right that disc players will be available for the foreseeable future, but I got a little paranoid about this issue this morning, and bought a couple of spare UHD players as backups- one Sony, and one Panasonic. Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.

IF you're gonna do that, you might wanna actually open them up and test them out (every once in a good while) and probably keep their firmware updated.

Since I already keep 2 players in use in my HT setup anyway (and also have 2 others lying around), I'll probably hold off until one or two die off or something (and/or when there's reasonably reliable rumor/news that Panasonic's exiting the market) -- I have a Panny 420 and a Sony X700 for UHD and a couple Oppos for universal BD (and region-free capability).

Heh.

I do this every now and then, though not for standalone disc players.

Every time I go shopping at nearby thrift shops, I'll pick up old computer dvd-rom and bluray-rom drives I find for around $4 a pop or less.

(This may sound really dumb). Before the pandemic when I use to semi-regularly shop for dvds/blurays at offline retailers like bestbuy, wallymart, costco, etc ..., I would also drop by a computer store and buy a new dvd-rom drive for $20 a pop whenever I also purchased a large 20+ discs set(s) typically a complete (or partial) tv series.

I may start buying a backup BD drive or two as well before long, probably including 4K-capable ones.

In the long run, I may indeed switch to ripping everything I care all that much about (or would likely revisit frequently enough) for a local NAS streaming setup and cut down on (at least primary) disc storage space needs further. I keep revisiting the idea every now and again, but just haven't felt quite the need nor desire to do that so far...

_Man_