Review: Panasonic DMPUB900 4K UHD Blu-ray Player

Guest blog by Becky.

Welcome to the next generation in home cinema: introducing the Panasonic DMPUB900 4K Blu-ray player.

When it comes to 4K, the Panasonic DMPUB900 really knows its stuff! It even has an award from The UHD Alliance, showing how it is capable of delivering unyielding 4K HDR performance.

On the audio side of things, the UB900 is designed to output high quality sound in a range of formats, but I will go into more detail a little later on.

So how does it give this 4K performance? The Panasonic UB900 has a nifty way of making sure you have the best quality. It will detect your TV and will convert the UHD Blu-ray video format into one that will suit it (just make sure you have a 4K 18-GBPS compatible HDMI cable).

ub900-2The player also features a 4K high precision chroma processor which is equipped with imaging technologies which have been tweaked by the Panasonic Hollywood laboratory Blu-ray facility. The UB900 is also THX ® Certified, so your film will look how the filmmaker intended it to look.

The UB900 is a UHD premium player, which will give you brighter whites, darker blacks and a broader contrast of colour and is HDR compatible.(HDR can be turned off too, if you require). I popped in ‘The Martian’ disc to demo the clarity and contrast, and all I can say is “Wow”! The UHD disc really does make a huge difference. There are a lot of dark scenes with the main character walking around with a torch, and with the HDR on you can still see the detail of the walls in the shadows.ub900-3Sound performance. The UB900 has the typical Panasonic analogue outputs on the rear of the player, along with optical and HDMI outputs. There is also a 2.1 analogue channel input. It is recommended that you connect the player up to an external sound system, so you don’t lose the clarity of the sound by splitting the sound the TV. With the analogue outputs, you could link up an amp to connect your TV, soundbar and any other external sources together; this will allow you to have the full cinema experience with the 7.1 channel surround sound option. The UB900, also works with WAV/FLAC/MP3/AAC/WMA formats.

The UB900, like most high end Blu-ray players, comes with smart services such as BBC iPlayer, Amazon video and more. The UB900 even has Netflix and YouTube in 4K! If you do wish to use the UB900 as a smart device, I would recommend connecting via Ethernet rather than the built in Wi-Fi, as this will give a more stable connection when downloading 4K content.

ub900-youtubeSo, to the verdict. I have been looking forward to UHD content coming to Blu-ray for quite a while now. Being one of the first UHD players available it had to be good to set the benchmark of what is possible in your own home. The player is easy to use with a very clear, good quality remote. With the auto detection on which UHD format to play, it looked excellent on our demo TV.

For demo availability find your local store and ask about seeing this player in action! Use our Click & Collect service and you could collect this amazing Blu-ray player in just one hour! Check availability here.