Reavon UBR-X200 4K UHD Universal Disc Player (1 Viewer)

[Kaskade1309]

I really wanted to wait and buy the X110. But for a grand...I just couldn't really justify it for what Oppo used to do well for about half the price.

Amen to that, brother.

Meanwhile my Sony X800M2 was really driving me insane...the picture and audio quality are fine, but having to remember to manually turn on Dolby Vision for discs that had it...that was making me bonkers.

So I just purchased (and am putting through its paces) a Panasonic DP-UB820P-K from Best Buy for $499. So far I'm thrilled with the picture and audio quality, it supports not just HDR and DV but also HDR+ and HLG. Additionally it has some HDR setting tweaks that at some point I'll have to do some research on, but out of the box A/V quality leaves nothing to be desired.

So what does the Reavon (and Oppo) have that this doesn't? SACD and DVD-A support, of which I have quite a few. Fortunately, this player literally sits on top of my Oppo BDP-103D which plays BD, SACD and DVD-A. So to me, that $500 in savings is worth having to use a different player for those formats.

But having to remember (or sometimes just plain forgetting) to turn on/off Dolby Vision on the Sony 4K player was worth the purchase of the Panasonic. No more wondering if I'm getting the best possible HDR format on my discs. Sony's implementation of DV on the 800M2 is quite frankly bonkers.

There are a TON of other things the Reavons/Oppos/Cambridge CXUHD/Pioneers/Pannde did that the Panasonics do not -- a lot to go into and list here.

 

[Carlo_M]

I don't disagree the Oppo (I don't have experience with the other brands you mentioned) do more, but for someone in my situation that has older Oppos (I have a 93, 103 and a 203) hanging around, I still have that other functionality and just needed a second 4K player (the 203 is in the bedroom) that didn't aggravate me with the constant manual switching of DV to on/off depending on the disc you put in. Had the Sony done that part automatically, I'd never have sprung for the Panny.

 

[Kaskade1309]

I don't disagree the Oppo (I don't have experience with the other brands you mentioned)

The other brands are all based on the same MediaTek processing chip that's in the UDP-203/205 -- that's why I mentioned them in the same sentence. As such, they share a lot of the same architecture, right down to their setup menus (some are slightly different from one another; the Cambridge Audio CXUHD, which I own as well, is a true clone of the UDP-203, down to the exact same menu layouts), so in this context, it makes sense to bring them up.

do more, but for someone in my situation that has older Oppos (I have a 93, 103 and a 203) hanging around, I still have that other functionality and just needed a second 4K player (the 203 is in the bedroom) that didn't aggravate me with the constant manual switching of DV to on/off depending on the disc you put in. Had the Sony done that part automatically, I'd never have sprung for the Panny.

If that's all you need, you're all good I suppose -- the Oppos and the rest I mentioned offered excellent functionality, especially for DVD playback. The Panasonics are AWFUL in this regard, and when you throw in their stupid features like the auto power off after 20 minutes (which cannot be overridden) thing, lack of aspect ratio control and zooming and no resume playback, there are a myriad of issues I have with the brand's 4K offerings.

 

[Carlo_M]

Since I have 3 Oppos, I will be sure to use them for DVD playback...although in honesty I can't recall the last time I spun one up.

Since I just got a new OLED TV for the holidays, I'm okay with the auto shutoff to prevent burn in. I realize this annoys most/many others, but for my use case, it's a non-issue.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Since I have 3 Oppos, I will be sure to use them for DVD playback...although in honesty I can't recall the last time I spun one up.

I suppose it's user needs, then; we still own a MASSIVE DVD library and rent them every week from Redbox, so DVD functionality is very important to us. Because the Panasonics cannot zoom in on any discs, like the other players mentioned can, we can't play our non-anamorphic DVDs back correctly, and this has forced us to rebuy many of our favorite titles on Blu-ray...which has gotten expensive, which you can imagine.

Since I just got a new OLED TV for the holidays, I'm okay with the auto shutoff to prevent burn in. I realize this annoys most/many others, but for my use case, it's a non-issue.

I understand that, but it should be USER CONTROLLED -- they should have left this feature as an on/off function, accessible via the setup menu, for those who don't want the unit to shut off after that amount of time.

This was originally a European mandate thing wherein Panasonic released their players -- notably the higher-end models -- with this feature kind of baked in because they claimed they "had to." The UB9000 wasn't supposed to come to the States, but when it did, they never removed the auto power off feature, which they SHOULD have for North American customers, at least.

 

[Carlo_M]

Hey, I get it's important to others. Don't mistake that I'm arguing for Panasonic.

 

[Kaskade1309]

No worries.

 

[YANG]

...There are a TON of other things the Reavons/Oppos/Cambridge CXUHD/Pioneers/Pannde did that the Panasonics do not -- a lot to go into and list here.

the Chinese players are mostly using the same system as OPPO/Cambridge players that are now discontinued. for sales attractions Pannde/Venppro/IPUK/CineUltra from Spain/Mr.Color from HK all uses the same aesthetics and basic MT8581 systems with configurable analog outputs and power distribution to be sold to the market.
Reavons are based off GIEC BDP5700 which currently no much other smaller brands/marque adopt.

aesthetically different in layout, tray position, connection, as well as led display, goes to a marque known as HDSir...

Panasonic employed a different system design. hence, you cant get the kind of performance from most Chinese makes... except Pioneer, with different build internally.

 

[Kaskade1309]

the Chinese players are mostly using the same system as OPPO/Cambridge players that are now discontinued. for sales attractions Pannde/Venppro/IPUK/CineUltra from Spain/Mr.Color from HK all uses the same aesthetics and basic MT8581 systems with configurable analog outputs and power distribution to be sold to the market.
Reavons are based off GIEC BDP5700 which currently no much other smaller brands/marque adopt.

aesthetically different in layout, tray position, connection, as well as led display, goes to a marque known as HDSir...

Panasonic employed a different system design. hence, you cant get the kind of performance from most Chinese makes... except Pioneer, with different build internally.

I know the Reavons have one thing in common with the Panasonics -- you can only access the picture adjustment controls (for parameters like contrast, color, noise reduction et al) when a disc is playing. This is a ridiculous implementation on Reavon's part, especially since the rest of the architecture mimics the Oppos, as it's terribly annoying when you want to double check what your settings are (even if they're all at "zero" or "neutral") and you need to have a disc inserted to do so (all other functionalities can be checked by simply entering the SETUP menu from the home screen).

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I know the Reavons have one thing in common with the Panasonics -- you can only access the picture adjustment controls (for parameters like contrast, color, noise reduction et al) when a disc is playing. This is a ridiculous implementation on Reavon's part, especially since the rest of the architecture mimics the Oppos, as it's terribly annoying when you want to double check what your settings are (even if they're all at "zero" or "neutral") and you need to have a disc inserted to do so (all other functionalities can be checked by simply entering the SETUP menu from the home screen).

No idea why they do that for 4K players these days, but the Sony X700 is like that w/ some of its display settings as well -- and presumably, all Sony and Panny 4K players are like that... though I haven't bothered to check that for my Panny 420.

Yes, quite annoying that.

_Man_

 

[Kaskade1309]

No idea why they do that for 4K players these days, but the Sony X700 is like that w/ some of its display settings as well -- and presumably, all Sony and Panny 4K players are like that... though I haven't bothered to check that for my Panny 420.

Yes, quite annoying that.

_Man_

Yes -- ALL Panasonic players (dating back to their debut Blu-ray player circa 2007, the DMP-BD10A, which I STILL own and use in the bedroom, albeit on its last legs) force you to pull up the picture adjustment menus WHILE a disc is spinning. There is no main settings menu access for these as it was on the Oppos (and related players save for the Reavons, as I mentioned).

Indeed, quite annoying when you're checking your settings in the main setup section and can't see the video adjustments...

 

[Richard Brand]

I would like to comment on some of the posts! First, while SACD never became the replacement for CD that Philips intended nearly 25 years ago, it is still going strongly in the classical music space. For example, the British on-line retailer Presto has over 4,000 titles available on SACD. These are about the same price as the equivalent CD and they mostly contain the CD as a separate layer. I see no downside in buying SACDs whenever they are available, whether you have an SACD player or not!

Not many retailers of silver disks or players have even heard of SACD (at least in Australia). One HiFi salesman recently fed me so many fake truths about SACD it was embarrassing. He claimed there was no audible difference between CD-quality and Direct Stream Digital, so why bother with SACD. Well, I for one can tell the difference between 2 and five channels of sound every time! I just put my head against a rear speaker. Classical music listeners are often concert goers and know the sounds an un-amplified orchestra makes. Compared with most amplified music (rock / pop / whatever) the dynamic range of classical music is huge.

For those who would like a cheap 4K player that can also play SACD (and BluRay, CD and DVD, not to mention streaming services) could I suggest the little Sony UBP-X700 which retails in Australia for A$319. It has just two outputs - an audio-only HDMI and a second HDMI for video and audio.

For those be-moaning that lack of components in the Reavon, the picture seems to omit the toroidal transformer in the X200. There are billions of transistors in the Reavon X200 chip set, which includes a two-channel DAC chip, a seven-channel DAC chip, the Mediatek System on a Chip, a Quad-core ARM CPU cluster and an ARM Graphics Processing Unit. We are going way beyond Very Large Scale Integration here! Cramming components on to a chip usually means increased speed, lower voltage and higher reliability. You don't need a big board for a handful of chips.

When my Marantz AV8400 BluRay / SACD player stopped reading high resolution disks, I popped into my local HiFi store half an hour before closing, and walked out with a player from a brand I'd never heard of, let alone seen any reviews. for! They said it would outperform my old Sony CDP-X7ESD CD-player on balanced outputs (a much heavier machine, really crammed with electronics and rated by some as the best CD player Sony has ever released to the public) and better the already stunning 4K picture from my Panasonic DMP-UB900. It did both, so I have replaced three silver disk players with one, at half the original cost!

Unfortunately, in this age of streaming, many consumers do not know how to factor in quality when purchasing. We have lost Oppo players, Pioneer, etc. Please support SACD and Reavon if you can

 

[jcroy]

I would like to comment on some of the posts! First, while SACD never became the replacement for CD that Philips intended nearly 25 years ago, it is still going strongly in the classical music space. For example, the British on-line retailer Presto has over 4,000 titles available on SACD. These are about the same price as the equivalent CD and they mostly contain the CD as a separate layer. I see no downside in buying SACDs whenever they are available, whether you have an SACD player or not!

Not many retailers of silver disks or players have even heard of SACD (at least in Australia). One HiFi salesman recently fed me so many fake truths about SACD it was embarrassing. He claimed there was no audible difference between CD-quality and Direct Stream Digital, so why bother with SACD. Well, I for one can tell the difference between 2 and five channels of sound every time! I just put my head against a rear speaker. Classical music listeners are often concert goers and know the sounds an un-amplified orchestra makes. Compared with most amplified music (rock / pop / whatever) the dynamic range of classical music is huge.

If more titles of interest to me had been released on sacd, I would have purchased more. Unfortunately in my genre of interest back in the early-mid 2000s during the era of sacd/dvdaudio's semi-mainstream market, I can count on one hand the number of titles of interest to me.

It turned out these particular albums released as sacd/cd two-layer discs, were largely garbage which I only listened to two or three times and subsequently forgot about them. The technical sound quality/fidelity is not an issue for these particular titles. The issue is that these particular titles had really crappy / boring song writing quality, in spite of the top notch musicianship and/or decent semi-modern recording quality.

In terms of classical music junk, the only works I still listen to are conducted by Von Karajan. At this point, I don't think these old Herbert von Karajan pieces will sound much better on blurayaudio, dvdaudio or sacd. (That is excluding the case of using an AI program to "clean up" the sound, sorta like what was done with Beatles archive material in recent times).

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

LOL! Does that new guy work for Reavon or something?

For the longest time, I wanted SACD (and BD-A) to do well and make it, but... it's probably mostly over now that hirez audio has gone mainstream streaming w/ Apple Music, et al. Yes, I'm a classical music lover (w/ occasional jazz listening amongst other genres), but I've been mostly just deferring to my Apple Music subscription of late since that's just too convenient on top of the fact I'm paying for it regardless (for the family). IF/when I get around to sitting down and seriously listen on my system, I would still prefer to pick a disc or something in my now-merely-modest collection, but not sure I wanna buy more anymore on my now-modest budget -- music purchase on disc is certainly not a priority anymore anyway.

Anyway, I still have my (pair of) Oppos for SACD, so... maybe if my 103 dies unexpectedly...

_Man_

PS: And oh, welcome to that new guy to HTF, @Richard Brand!

 

[jcroy]

For the longest time, I wanted SACD (and BD-A) to do well and make it, but... it's probably mostly over now that hirez audio has gone mainstream streaming w/ Apple Music, et al.

I was on other side, in that I was willing to replace a large portion of my music cd collection with dvd-audio discs. Unfortunately this never happened, due to titles of interest were never released on dvd-audio at all. (Neither blurayaudio or sacd for that matter).

My thinking about this was that the encryption was already cracked for dvd-video, and that the dvd consortium likely had to scramble on short notice to find a replacement drm system for dvd-audio in late-1999 -> early/mid y2k. I figured it might be a crappy encryption system which would eventually be cracked a few years later. In the end, it turned to be cryptomeria which was eventually cracked in the mid 2000s.

Cryptomeria cipher - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In contrast, the sacd and later blurayaudio drm systems were much harder to crack.

 

[Richard Brand]

In terms of classical music junk, the only works I still listen to are conducted by Von Karajan. At this point, I don't think these old Herbert von Karajan pieces will sound much better on blurayaudio, dvdaudio or sacd

The renowned English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was once asked what he thought of Herbert von Karajan. "Oh, he is a sort of musical Malcolm Sargent" came the reply, thereby damning both with faint praise. Herbert did strive for beautiful sound and happily used the latest technology. Have a look at what his old orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, is doing under its chief conductor Kirrill Petrenko. High resolution audio and video on Bluray, SACD and streaming from the Digital Concert Hall. I don't think you will find a more moving performance of Tschaikovsky's Pathetique symphony. A delicious irony is that Karajan was a Nazi and Petrenko is a Russian-born Jew who looks a bit like a Nazi caricature of a Jew. The Berliner Philharmoniker is now democratic and even includes women players these days. Hooray

​

 

[Richard Brand]

Thanks the welcome! And I do not work for Reavon. In fact, I am highly critical of Reavon for its pathetic implementation of SACD playback through analogue channels. IT DOWNCONVERTS TO CD QUALITY.

I bought my Reavon UBR X200 after my Marantz AV8400 stumbled when playing BluRay and SACD disks. After days of frustration, I discovered that SACD will only play through the analogue outputs if HDMI output is set to PCM, Otherwise what plays is full volume noise! To make matters worse, to get the best audio on 4K disks, HDMI output needs to be set to BITSTREAM.

The manual recommends setting HDMI output to NONE when playing SACD through analogue - a setting which also gives high-volume noise. According to Reavon support, this was changed in a software update. This change is not mentioned in Reavon's release notes.

Switching HDMI mode is a royal pain, and if you forget, expect to be blasted with white noise. Reavon should at least change their firmware to mute this noise, change the manual, update the on-line release notes and better yet, allow the user to preset a default HDMI output. Or just play SACD over analogue and HDMI simultaneously as they do for CD. (If Sony licensing permits).

Now I have found out that the 7 channel DAC does not even support DSD, the native format of SACD. Instead, Reavon down-converts to CD quality - 16-bit 44.1-kHz before feeding this DAC. REALLY? This is absolutely disgraceful and might be regarded as deceptive and misleading marketing.

(SACD is not dying for classical music. Presto currently lists over 4,000 titles from about 20 labels)

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Thanks the welcome! And I do not work for Reavon. In fact, I am highly critical of Reavon for its pathetic implementation of SACD playback through analogue channels. IT DOWNCONVERTS TO CD QUALITY.

I bought my Reavon UBR X200 after my Marantz AV8400 stumbled when playing BluRay and SACD disks. After days of frustration, I discovered that SACD will only play through the analogue outputs if HDMI output is set to PCM, Otherwise what plays is full volume noise! To make matters worse, to get the best audio on 4K disks, HDMI output needs to be set to BITSTREAM.

The manual recommends setting HDMI output to NONE when playing SACD through analogue - a setting which also gives high-volume noise. According to Reavon support, this was changed in a software update. This change is not mentioned in Reavon's release notes.

Switching HDMI mode is a royal pain, and if you forget, expect to be blasted with white noise. Reavon should at least change their firmware to mute this noise, change the manual, update the on-line release notes and better yet, allow the user to preset a default HDMI output. Or just play SACD over analogue and HDMI simultaneously as they do for CD. (If Sony licensing permits).

Now I have found out that the 7 channel DAC does not even support DSD, the native format of SACD. Instead, Reavon down-converts to CD quality - 16-bit 44.1-kHz before feeding this DAC. REALLY? This is absolutely disgraceful and might be regarded as deceptive and misleading marketing.

(SACD is not dying for classical music. Presto currently lists over 4,000 titles from about 20 labels)

Wait! Given all that, why would you want us to support/buy Reavon in your previous post???

But thanks for alerting us of all this though. Definitely makes me think their players are not worthwhile at all. Thankfully, my 2 old Oppos are still perfectly fine so far...

_Man_

 

[Richard Brand]

Wait! Given all that, why would you want us to support/buy Reavon in your previous post???

But thanks for alerting us of all this though. Definitely makes me think their players are not worthwhile at all. Thankfully, my 2 old Oppos are still perfectly fine so far...

When I wrote that first post, I was very impressed with CD analog and 4K video playback over dual HDMI cables, and had yet to discover how woeful SACD playback is THROUGH 7.1 CHANNEL ANALOGUE OUTPUTS. This does not disqualify the Reavon if you are happy to play SACD through HDMI (but you might not want to pay the extra for 7 analog outputs). For those who cannot get hold of second-hand Oppo units, the Reavon is about the only universal silver disk player available at the moment, apart from the cheap Sony transport. Silver disks are usually way better than streaming from a quality point of view, and are always available if you have a player.

I have not seen any professional review which analyses the 7.1 channel analog playback. The 2-channel DAC is better quality - at least it supports Direct Stream Digital. I will have to ask Reavon how they deliver 2-channel SACD material!

 

[Robin9]

Thanks the welcome! And I do not work for Reavon. In fact, I am highly critical of Reavon for its pathetic implementation of SACD playback through analogue channels. IT DOWNCONVERTS TO CD QUALITY.

I bought my Reavon UBR X200 after my Marantz AV8400 stumbled when playing BluRay and SACD disks. After days of frustration, I discovered that SACD will only play through the analogue outputs if HDMI output is set to PCM, Otherwise what plays is full volume noise! To make matters worse, to get the best audio on 4K disks, HDMI output needs to be set to BITSTREAM.

The manual recommends setting HDMI output to NONE when playing SACD through analogue - a setting which also gives high-volume noise. According to Reavon support, this was changed in a software update. This change is not mentioned in Reavon's release notes.

Switching HDMI mode is a royal pain, and if you forget, expect to be blasted with white noise. Reavon should at least change their firmware to mute this noise, change the manual, update the on-line release notes and better yet, allow the user to preset a default HDMI output. Or just play SACD over analogue and HDMI simultaneously as they do for CD. (If Sony licensing permits).

Now I have found out that the 7 channel DAC does not even support DSD, the native format of SACD. Instead, Reavon down-converts to CD quality - 16-bit 44.1-kHz before feeding this DAC. REALLY? This is absolutely disgraceful and might be regarded as deceptive and misleading marketing.

(SACD is not dying for classical music. Presto currently lists over 4,000 titles from about 20 labels)

It seems you need to cash in your life savings and go for the mega expensive PS Audio combination of SACD player and DAC via I2S.