Although a 2016 player, a recent firmware update brings features into line with the 2017 Panasonic range UB400 / 300, including the ability to output a 10-bit HDR signal rather than 12-bit which proved to be a problem with non-Panasonic HDR TV's.
£254 is cheaper than the step-down 2017 replacement, with the UB400 currently £300 at present. The further step-down UB300 is £200 but only has a single HDMI output which will present a problem unless a) Your AV Receiver is fully HDMI 2.0a compatible or b) Your TV can pass through multichannel audio properly (most don't, certainly no Panasonic TV's !).
No prospect of Dolby Vision perhaps worth considering if you have an LG / Sony with DV and looking at a long-term purchase.
Top comments
OrribleHarry
3 May 177#3
I think an Xbox One S is a better value 4k BluRay player
mckee74 to OrribleHarry
3 May 173#6
Its better value as a gaming console but not as a UHD player. I was happy with the Xbox but now use this player and the difference in PQ is insane.
All comments (38)
TALON1973
2 May 17#1
not worth touching ytge 400/ 300 with a bargepole . good price
I think an Xbox One S is a better value 4k BluRay player
mckee74 to OrribleHarry
3 May 173#6
Its better value as a gaming console but not as a UHD player. I was happy with the Xbox but now use this player and the difference in PQ is insane.
jakejoe30 to OrribleHarry
3 May 17#27
I own both and the xbox is not a very good uhd player. The picture processing of the panny blows the xbox away.
The motion on the xbox is terrible, judders when camera pans. Colours not as vivid and softer picture. Some banding. The panny has none of these as it has a dedicaicated picture processor which the xbox lacks.
Tequila to OrribleHarry
4 May 171#30
Yes,but if the consumer is not a gamer and have no interst in gaming,having a bulkier white box games console with funky,teenage-ish name and a game controller is just something undesirable as opposed to a sleek,black,dedicated,more professional looking device which likely has much better build quality and is much more reliable..
shakalaka24 to OrribleHarry
20 May 17#38
not really. Just bought an xbox one S to use it as a bluray player for 4k/HDR movies. Its working very OK, but after about 1h picture start stuttering and freezing.
Read through internet - a lot of people have similiar problem. Also microsoft is aware - but propably cannot do nothing.
Whem xbox one S get hot - problems starts...
afroylnt
3 May 172#4
looking at the price / availability of 4k bu-rays it doesn't seem a format that any of the main films companies are interested in pushing...
stevenjameshyde to afroylnt
3 May 17#11
Who needs 4k films when you have Planet Earth 2?
davejones22
3 May 17#5
I had my price match confirmed yesterday. JL will usually match a voucher code if is displayed on the actual product page itself, as the one at Hughes is (EDIT; Was). Voucher codes from elsewhere on the same retailer website or externally are much less likely to be matched, but still often worth a go, particularly on a run-out model.
Edit: Voucher code now expired and no longer valid.
Back to £279
chrisredmayne
3 May 171#7
what's a pq
Crossbow
3 May 17#8
Picture quality.
superted2008
3 May 17#9
heat given as you have just reminded me I need to get my Samsung 4k blu-ray player on ebay, I had totally forgotten about it.
and obviously because this deal is a decent price :smile:
Leigh
3 May 17#10
Code not valid?
afroylnt
3 May 17#12
I am going to guess all the people who invested in a 4k TV then realising that there are few quality 4k feeds available, desperately feel the need to justify to themselves why they brought a 4k TV in the first place?.../:stuck_out_tongue:
antonyi
3 May 171#13
Really? In what way is pq better over the Xbox?
adeuk5
3 May 17#14
From my experience, just having upscaled HD, or even SD, justifies a 4K TV :smirk:
afroylnt to adeuk5
3 May 17#18
Many peope have said to get a good upscaled image you have to have a good quality 4k TV; a low or mid quality TV does'nt have sufficiently good upscaling. Other people have said that SD does not upscale at all well and can actually be worse on a 4k TV.
dan5
3 May 17#15
Surely the digital data transmitted down the HDMI cable to the TV is the same when the Xbox reads it from the disc, as when this player reads it from the disc. Not sure how picture quality can be different???
amour3k
3 May 17#16
Wouldn't it be CHEAPER to get a PS3/4?, OR an XBOX 360 or something?. :-(
Lol.
ronmanager
3 May 17#17
I have this player and on mine it locks up the first time you switch it on and try to play a UHD disc. Turn it off and on again and it plays fine - all firmware up to date. Annoying but otherwise it plays OK.
antonyi
3 May 17#19
This was my thinking...
afroylnt
3 May 17#20
I think the dedicated 4k players may have better image processing but whether you will notice maybe down to how good your TV is.....
FireBIade200
3 May 17#21
refurbs available on ebay with 12 month warranty for £199
charlesw2506 to FireBIade200
4 May 17#34
Any link please? I can't find on eBay, cheapest one is around £240?
Horrorwood
3 May 17#22
Nope. It needs to read the data from the disk and process it to send it down the cable.
It doesn't just transmit the raw 1's and 0's from a disk and have the TV decode everything.
adamspencer95
3 May 17#23
this.
unless you have an absolute top of the line TV i dont think it will make an appreciable difference
TK42
3 May 17#24
SD will look best on a 720p set as less pixel spread. 1080p best on a 1080p set and 4K on a 4K set. If the source and screen are the same then this is about as good as it gets as no upscaling is required. 4K on a 4k set will look better than 1080p on a 1080p set though.
If you scroll down you will see a comparison photo too.
adamspencer95
3 May 17#26
as far as i can tell, the summary of the article is that the xbox one s natively does some extra processing to RGB which can be switched off, therefore meaning it'll end up outputting the same signal to the TV. it is then up to the TV to decode and display, so you've sort of proved my point...
dan5
4 May 17#28
I still think this is BS. Surely the data on the UHD disc defines the colours, the player shouldn't need to mess with this stuff.
Zaim2012
4 May 17#29
It all depends on what you want, if you're just after a 4k Blu-ray player I'd much rather buy a dedicated one with full support for Dolby Amtos/DTS X, and with the capability of playing back 4k content via network etc.
OrribleHarry
4 May 17#31
Ouch! OK :confused:
davejones22
4 May 171#32
There will be minor differences as the disc is encoded with 4:2:0 chroma which needs to be processed and converted to the desired chroma output, which in the Panasonics case is 4:4:4. Whether or not these are noticeable at normal viewing distances is open to debate.
It's probably more important to chose a player that matches your set properly; until recently this Panasonic was a bad choice for some LG/Samsing TVs as they didn't like the 12bit output, but that seems to have been fixed.
Far more variation is seen by players forced noise reduction, disc noise, loss of lip-sync, hdmi-cec integration with your brand of TV etc etc.
The Xbox for example is useless to me because my TV can't pass through 5.1 signal and my reciever can't pass through the 4k signal. Because it's only got one HDMI output I could not get surround sound. It's also too noisy and has lip sync issues and doesnt work properly with the HDMI-cec on my TV.
So in my case, I'd rather have this player as I don't need a games console.
Swings and roundabouts.
jakejoe30
4 May 171#33
Nice. Please comment when you have owned an compared both.
Gixxerman001
6 May 17#35
Curses!
So, the XB1S isn't quite up to the necessary mark.
OK, couldn't find this one @ the price originally posted so I went looking for a £200 refurb.
Couldn't find that either.
I did find a 'hardly used' Panny DMP-UB900, with 2 x 4K films in ex cond that I don't have (& am very happy to have), for £270 (inc P&P).
I look forward to seeing the difference.
I'm planning on trading the XB1S for a Scorpio when they are released (or shortly after, maybe 1st price drop) hopefully they get it right on that one.
For those slating the move to 4k I'd just say this, I wanted a larger set (moving from a plasma 50" to a 65") and the Hisense 65M7000 I now have is superb.
Even (to my surprise) SD content is perfectly watchable, HD TV looks great and Netflix & Amazon 4k looks very nice too, 1080p Blu-ray is outstanding & the 4k films I have now look a definite step-up using the XB1S.
I don't feel I have anything to 'justify' to myself, the new set is clearly the improvement I was after (& @ £1000 it was, in my opinion, a bargain - & will do very nicely for a few years until OLED, or whatever comes next, matures).
UB700 £199 & UB900 £349 Official refurbs, 12 months warranty. Of course they sell quickly though but generally they put 1 or 2 on every few days at about 06:00am, look in sold listings etc.
charlesw2506
7 May 17#37
cheers ended up ordering one off eBay for £240 as I'm impatient :wink:
Opening post
£254 at Hughes using code "maymad25"
John Lewis will price match for 2 year guarantee.
Lowest price I've seen that John Lewis will price match.
Highly rated: https://www.avforums.com/review/panasonic-dmp-ub700-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-player-review.13071
Although a 2016 player, a recent firmware update brings features into line with the 2017 Panasonic range UB400 / 300, including the ability to output a 10-bit HDR signal rather than 12-bit which proved to be a problem with non-Panasonic HDR TV's.
£254 is cheaper than the step-down 2017 replacement, with the UB400 currently £300 at present. The further step-down UB300 is £200 but only has a single HDMI output which will present a problem unless a) Your AV Receiver is fully HDMI 2.0a compatible or b) Your TV can pass through multichannel audio properly (most don't, certainly no Panasonic TV's !).
No prospect of Dolby Vision perhaps worth considering if you have an LG / Sony with DV and looking at a long-term purchase.
Top comments
All comments (38)
"We don't match prices only available via 3rd party websites, or with voucher codes."
https://m.johnlewis.com/customer-services/prices-and-payment/conditions-for-price-matching
The motion on the xbox is terrible, judders when camera pans. Colours not as vivid and softer picture. Some banding. The panny has none of these as it has a dedicaicated picture processor which the xbox lacks.
Read through internet - a lot of people have similiar problem. Also microsoft is aware - but propably cannot do nothing.
Whem xbox one S get hot - problems starts...
Edit: Voucher code now expired and no longer valid.
Back to £279
and obviously because this deal is a decent price :smile:
Lol.
It doesn't just transmit the raw 1's and 0's from a disk and have the TV decode everything.
unless you have an absolute top of the line TV i dont think it will make an appreciable difference
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/oppo-203-201705024457.htm
If you scroll down you will see a comparison photo too.
It's probably more important to chose a player that matches your set properly; until recently this Panasonic was a bad choice for some LG/Samsing TVs as they didn't like the 12bit output, but that seems to have been fixed.
Far more variation is seen by players forced noise reduction, disc noise, loss of lip-sync, hdmi-cec integration with your brand of TV etc etc.
The Xbox for example is useless to me because my TV can't pass through 5.1 signal and my reciever can't pass through the 4k signal. Because it's only got one HDMI output I could not get surround sound. It's also too noisy and has lip sync issues and doesnt work properly with the HDMI-cec on my TV.
So in my case, I'd rather have this player as I don't need a games console.
Swings and roundabouts.
So, the XB1S isn't quite up to the necessary mark.
OK, couldn't find this one @ the price originally posted so I went looking for a £200 refurb.
Couldn't find that either.
I did find a 'hardly used' Panny DMP-UB900, with 2 x 4K films in ex cond that I don't have (& am very happy to have), for £270 (inc P&P).
I look forward to seeing the difference.
I'm planning on trading the XB1S for a Scorpio when they are released (or shortly after, maybe 1st price drop) hopefully they get it right on that one.
For those slating the move to 4k I'd just say this, I wanted a larger set (moving from a plasma 50" to a 65") and the Hisense 65M7000 I now have is superb.
Even (to my surprise) SD content is perfectly watchable, HD TV looks great and Netflix & Amazon 4k looks very nice too, 1080p Blu-ray is outstanding & the 4k films I have now look a definite step-up using the XB1S.
I don't feel I have anything to 'justify' to myself, the new set is clearly the improvement I was after (& @ £1000 it was, in my opinion, a bargain - & will do very nicely for a few years until OLED, or whatever comes next, matures).
UB700 £199 & UB900 £349 Official refurbs, 12 months warranty. Of course they sell quickly though but generally they put 1 or 2 on every few days at about 06:00am, look in sold listings etc.