![]() ![]() When I watched Passengers, the picture looked stunningly detailed and displayed a subtle color range. Of course, Ultra HD Blu-ray playback is the main attraction here, and the UBP-X800 delivered on that front as well. Nonetheless, I still found upconverted Blu-ray picture quality to be convincingly 4K-like with both players. The Panasonic’s more comprehensive range of detail-enhancement and noise-reduction adjustments did give me more flexibility to tweak images when watching standard Blu-rays and DVDs. When I viewed a scene from the Blu-ray of The Lego Movie where Vitruvius escorts Emmet into his mind to convince him of his ability to become a Master Builder, the translucent Lego landscape had a finely textured look, as the highlights on the computer-modeled plastic pieces glistened with detail. The Sony also compared favorably with the Panasonic when playing animated content. In contrast, the fine lines in mom’s ribbed coat looked solid, and there was no hint of edge enhancement or other noise. For instance, when I watched the chapter “Innocence” from the standard Blu-ray of Tree of Life, a close-up shot of an infant’s face clearly revealed the smooth, powdery, slightly fuzzy texture of the child’s skin. Comparing its performance with the Panasonic player’s, the Sony held up extremely well when upconverting 1080p material to 4K resolution. ![]() The UBP-X800 sailed through our full suite of video processing tests, which puts it in the company of the Panasonic DMP-UB900 (see my review in our February/March issue), as well as Oppo’s UDP-203. Although I didn’t test this feature, I should mention that the Sony can be configured to stream audio via Bluetooth to wireless headphones and speakers. I also set the DSD Output mode to Off so the player would output multichannel PCM signals over HDMI when playing SACDs. (Other options for that last setting include YCbCr, YCbCr, and RGB.)įor Audio setup, I set BD Audio Mix to Off, which allowed the player to send Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams to the Anthem pre/pro. HDMI Deep Color Output was set to Auto, Display Type to TV, and YCbCr/RGB to Auto. ![]() UPnP media server software used for testing the Sony’s DLNA renderer function was JRiver Media Center 21 for Mac OS X.Īfter selecting the 4K option in the Screen Settings submenu (other options let you select Auto or a fixed resolution ranging from 480i up to 4K), I enabled the player’s 24p and HDR output settings. I used a Netgear Orbi 802.11ac router for my wireless connection, which easily streamed 4K-resolution Netflix and other programs to the player’s dual-band Wi-Fi receiver. To test the UBP-X800, I connected its HDMI 2.0a output to a Vizio M65-D0 Ultra HDTV and its secondary, audio-only HDMI output to an Anthem AVM 50 preamp/processor. There’s even a List mode that displays all available apps in your Favorites list. The app’s Remote Control mode duplicates all key features on the handset, while its Navigation Pad, Cursor, and Keypad modes provide enhanced functionality for things like browsing onscreen lists in apps or entering text in search windows. Sony’s Video and TV SideView iOS/Android app offers a solid alternative to using the remote. There’s a big white-and-red button that takes you straight to Netflix, as well as a Display button that calls up the following onscreen stats: video resolution and frame rate HDR/SDR designation soundtrack format, sample rate, and data transfer rate and video encoding format and variable data transfer rate. While it lacks the former’s large, fully backlit keypad, the buttons on the surface of Sony’s compact remote are generally easy to locate, even in a dim room-something that isn’t the case with Samsung’s handset. I’d rank Sony’s remote control squarely between the ones included with Panasonic’s DMP-UB900 and Samsung’s UBD-K8500 players. ![]()
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