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Tiana Dubree

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Aug 2, 2024, 5:51:39 AM8/2/24

to niapittiepuff

I am asking if a ROKU device will allow me to watch my netflix account on a older Panasonic plasma TV that does not support the streaming of the Netflix account now. Some kind of adapter suggested needed?

If the TV has HDMI inputs, you can use any Roku device. If cost is an issue, I would recommend the Express 4K+. Do NOT get the regular Express, as it has too little memory and runs into constant issues.

@DennyPAs the other member stated, Roku's connect via HDMI so the Panasonic will need to support 1080i (HD) in order to use it. If yours is 720p, it probably uses RCA composite connections which won't work with current Roku models. I owned a couple of Panasonic plasma and the switch to OLED is remarkable as is 4K resolution

No Roku I know of has ever supported 1080i. All current models support 720p and 1080p, and the 4K models support 2160p. I had an older Panasonic plasma (ST30, 1080p) and it worked just fine with my Roku players at the time.

After almost five years on the market, one supply chain-oriented hardware swap, and multiple firmware updates, the DP-UB9000 is still considered the 4K Blu-ray player to beat and the best disc-based videophile solution for 4K and now 8K displays and projectors.

The DP-UB9000 reference-class UHD Blu-ray player utilizes Panasonic in-house color and HDR processing technologies to reproduce 4K UHD pictures with cinema-level quality in the home. The DP-UB9000 plays almost every modern disc-based, CD-sized video format.

The DP-UB9000 also supports every current iteration of HDR technology, including HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision, combined with what Panasonic says is the best possible audio quality to complement the best disc-based media picture quality. Users can get all of this for an average retail selling price of $1,099.

While the DP-UB9000 is a universal disc player capable of playing everything from music CDs to UHD Blu-rays, it is also a smart device with wired and wireless network connectivity, Google and Amazon Alexa support, and onboard streaming applications.

Panasonic uses a High-grade ESS Sabre D2A converter for playing high-resolution audio file codecs. The DP-UB9000 creates a spatial sound experience with support for surround formats like Dolby Atmos and DTS-X.

While streaming content has increased dramatically, there are still home theater enthusiasts that prefer physical discs. Many movie lovers have hundreds of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in our collections. The Panasonic DP-UB9000 is designed to maximize the picture and sound quality of those discs. While the DP-UB9000 can't play SACD or DVD-Audio discs, it is also a high-quality CD player.

This attention to material quality is only found in reference-class products, of which the DP-DP-UB9000 is undoubtedly one. The player's finish looks and feels every bit as premium on the outside as this flagship product is on the inside. On the downside, the front panel of the UB9000 is a fingerprint magnet.

A newly developed drive base and a thick steel plate hold the disk drive to the center of the 2 layer chassis. The Disc mechanism is center mounted to increase stability. Unwanted vibration and noise are reduced while precision is increased. When the tray opens and closes, it is smooth and silent. Load speeds were faster than I expected. Heavy steel plates lower the center of gravity.

The front OLED display can be set to dim automatically or manually adjusted from a dedicated button on the remote control to create the ideal home cinema environment. The display is visible without being too bright to become distracting when the lights are down.

My only criticism of this display is the very basic nature of the data it shows. This means the user must go into the menu system to get information that could, and on some competitor's units, does get shown on the front panel screen.

These types of connections are commonly used in professional audio and high-end Hi-FI systems because they provide a balanced signal. A balanced signal means the audio is transmitted on two conductors with an equal but opposite polarity, which helps cancel out electromagnetic interference and noise.

My professional background includes all aspects of the consumer and professional product industries. Still, as we focus on projectors, I rarely enjoy playing with my professional audio equipment for work. In this case, I got the opportunity to dust off a pair of my studio monitors and test them with this player.

The HDR Optimizer, also made possible by years of knowledge from the Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory, ensures the DP-UB9000 is compatible with the latest standards of HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, while for conventional HDR10 content, HDR Optimizer will bring the best quality to your footage.

Tone mapping is a technology typically provided by the display. The problem with doing this is that consumers are left at the manufacturer's mercy, getting whatever tone mapping solution they provide. Panasonic has left nothing to chance, providing users with a top-notch tone mapping solution built into the DP-UB9000. Tone mapping is used to adjust the brightness level of the content. And even HDR images from ordinary

At the top of this section, I talked a lot about the physical chassis and the stability this provides, but there are other types of stability on this player. Panasonic provides multiple power supplies for both the 2-channel analog and 7.1 analog outputs and dedicated digital amplification.

The primary benefit of separate amplification is that each output delivers a high-quality, stable audio signal with an incredibly small amount of noise. If Panasonic did not take this extra step, the noise would likely be generated and passed on with the player's audio signal.

High-quality components are used all throughout the player. The DP-DP-UB9000 utilizes a high-grade ESS Sabre D2A converter. This premium DAC creates a precise, rich sound from the latest high-resolution digital signals with an exceptional signal-to-noise ratio.

While the main reason why someone would purchase a DP-UB9000 is to play back disc, the player does include wired and wireless network connectivity and smart features. The player supports both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa-enabled network devices. The player can receive "casted" content via mirroring with compatible smartphones or tablets.

The DP-UB9000 can play content from a USB or external hard disc drive (HDD) and it also offers network drive access. Panasonic has even included a suite of popular streaming applications like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video.

The Panasonic DP-UB9000 is designed to reproduce colors and rich, detailed images as filmmakers intended. The DP-UB9000 offers a surround experience to complement and enhance displayed video content. This one-of-a-kind 4K UHD Blu-ray player gives users a premium cinema-grade entertainment experience at home.

The Panasonic DP-UB9000 is not a universal player or media server. The DP-UB9000 does not play DVD Audio or SACD. The Panasonic DP-UB9000 is the best-made 4K Ultra-HD displaying the highest image and sound quality currently available in a disc-based player.

The Panasonic DP-UB9000 supports every popular HDR (High Dynamic Range) format, including HDR, HLG, HDR10+and Dolby Vision. Most Blu-ray players do not support all four formats, so Philip Jones utilizes a DP-UB9000 as his reference UHD disc player.

No projector can reproduce all the brightness information found in consumer HDR content mastered at 1000 to 4000nits, so the content must be tone mapped. Many projectors and flat panels struggle to properly tone map HDR material resulting in blown-out highlights or a dim-looking picture.

In addition to the preset HDR Optimizer, you have the ability to fine-tune the HDR look even further. If you press and hold the HDR SETTING button on the remote control to access the HDR Optimizer advanced menu options.

The UB9000 includes two different tone map curves called High Luminance Projector mode or Basic Luminance Projector mode. High Luminance mode is designed to maximize brightness and highlight detail in HDR material, while Basic Luminance is designed to deliver the widest color gamut reproduction (with the projector's P3 color filter engaged) at the expense of some on-screen brightness.

Since we had a JVC projector, we experimented with letting the DP-UB9000 do the HDR tone mapping versus the JVC Dynamic HDR tone mapping. While both did an excellent job with the projector and UB9000 in the default settings, we preferred the projector's internal tone mapping.

In addition to the player's HDR Optimizer feature, Panasonic allows users to adjust the HDR intensity of the UB9000. This feature is very handy if the room you watch movies in is a room that does not have full control of ambient lighting. The HDR setting mode can be accessed via the 4K UHD player's extensive remote control.

Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are not available on projectors but in the past year or so, we are starting to see models that support these formats. For example, Hisense introduced Dolby Vision support in their latest Laser TVs, and Samsung UST projector as well as JVC's newer 4K DILA projectors now support HDR10+. I would love the opportunity to compare the same content mastered in HDR10+ versus Dolby Vision but very few displays (and no projectors) support both formats.

I am using a Hisense L9G as my display, which supports Dolby Vision but it is not compatible with HDR10+ content. In a future review, I intend to use a Samsung projector with HDR10+ and give my impressions of HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. I suspect that the differences I see will have less to do with HDR encoding in these two very competitive formats and more with how Samsung and Hisense each approach overall image processing and tone mapping.

Most projectors that will be paired with the DP-UB9000 do a great job upscaling HD content to 4K. However, the DP-UB9000 does offer very good built-in upscaling capability. Viewing both real-world material and test content from the Spears & Munsil evaluation disc, confirmed that this player does an excellent job of handling HD upscaling. You can see in the gallery above the testing graph that this Panasonic player does an excellent job upscaling.