Panasonic UB9000 & UB820 Best Black Levels For Dark Movies & HDR OLED TV Settings

Panasonic UB9000 & UB820 Best Black Levels For Dark Movies & HDR OLED TV Settings
QUICK TIPS
- Best Dynamic Range Adjustment Setting For a (Calibrated) LGC9 = +2
- TV Tip 1 = Get all firmware updates and then run a factory default on your TV.
- TV Tip 2 = If your black levels don't look good, use an accurate "day mode". On an LGC9 it's called Cinema Day. There's is one for SDR, HDR, and Dolby Vision. All 3 need to be set.
- TV Tip 3 = If you have a 2020 OLED TV or above, try adjusting the black level control before trying the adjustments on the Panasonic UB9000 or UB820 on your TV menu before trying. That might be all you need.
OTHER THINGS - WORD USAGE
I use words like clipping and crush interchangeably. But, most of the time, I'm simply meaning destroying black information or destroying white information.
PANASONIC 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY PLAYERS
Panasonic UB9000-K on Amazon: amzn.to/3YDHzCV
Panasonic UB820-K on Amazon: amzn.to/3JSxnm3
FREE STUFF ON AMAZON
amzn.to/3Ezlpuc
My name is Carl, I run a family-run business with my dad (Glen) and my brother (Mark) called HD MOVIE SOURCE. I love movies and all the tech that goes along with them. I love to talk about the quality of transfers a lot, it's an enormous enjoyment in my life. I'm a big enthusiast of movies, and movie quality, from cameras to grain, and color grading. I love calibrating speakers, and subwoofers, encoding 4K content, sound, and anything techy. This is what I love to do. I'm also a big gamer with my brother and World of Warcraft also sucks up a lot of my time, LOL. Somebody has to do it right? Any questions please let me know.
--------------------
Please Follow us on Social Media.
TWITTER: / hdmoviesource
INSTAGRAM: / hdmoviesource
FACEBOOK: / hdmoviesource
REDDIT: / hd_movie_source
OTHER SOCIALS
/ hdmoviesource
/ admin
vero.co/hdmoviesource
truthsocial.com/@HDMOVIESOURCE
WEBSITE
www.hdmoviesource.com/
SUPPORT US
/ hdmoviesource
CONTACT US
[e-mail]

[@phil4kbaker720]

Awesome video Carl made a few changes myself very informative loads of great tips thank you so much.

[@hdmoviesource]

Nice Phil, thank you. I hope it helps.

[@cheekster777]

Thanks, as always, Carl. 🙏🏻

[@hdmoviesource]

Thanks Cheekster, much appreciated.

[@TheFern5000]

⁠ I was just playing with these settings just before I saw this vid haha! I have an lg e6 oled and Pani 820. Dolby Vision looks great on this tv but hdr needs some love. With the Pani hdr optimizer I found the default settings regained clipped detail but wash out the pic slightly and adjusting the dynamic contrast, like you did, helped fix that. Also, important to note, that fix works for most films but some can be mastered at higher nit levels (The Meg 4000nit) so these settings will need to be tweaked even further to regain that clipped detail. I also was playing with the white and black settings, along w the dynamic contrast, and they seemed to dial it in even more for my tv. But I’m going to play with the settings a little more w a variety of light and dark reference imagery from the S&M uhd disc.

[@hdmoviesource]

Excellent Fern, nice work. I appreciate your comment.

[@iandeming]

LG CX owner here - This was super helpful for me. I just picked up the UB820 and noticed most discs looking DARKER then their AppleTV streaming counterparts, particularly with Dolby Vision. After some experimentation, I found the look, contrast, and black levels better with DV turned off, favoring HDR10 at +1 or +2. I’ve A/B tested a lot of content and DV on discs simply looks too dark on Cinema mode, even in a blacked out room. With this said, I’m going to A/B test HDR10 on Cinema vs DV on Cinema Home and see if there appears to be a winner between those two!

[@hdmoviesource]

Yeah, I think +2 is the best for me, and I have an LGC9, it provides excellent black level detail Ian.

[@MarkTallen]

Great video, Carl. Regarding the Dynamic Range Optimiser on the tv, I suppose if the Panasonic ub9000/820 HDR optimiser is being used on the player, there's no need to have the tv optimiser switched on too?

[@hdmoviesource]

This is called double tone-mapping, but not in the same way as double tone mapping when using Dolby Vision. What the HDR optimizer will do is set the nits to 1000, and then the TV's Dynamic Tone Mapping setting will take that 1000 nits and scale it to its system. In some cases where you feel you need the image brightened, it can be useful Mark. I'm not saying is absolutely accurate but when you need the brightness pumped because of a really low brightness movie it definitely helps.

[@darrenrobins6347]

This was a really informative video, thank you. I've had my 77" LG C2 OLED for 4 months now but still noticing quite a bit of black crush, particuarly with characters who have dark hair where it mostly appears as one dense colour. If I raise the black level from 50 to 60 and above, you can retrieve the extra detail, but then of course get a washed out picture. Naturally all the picture process modes are turned off, as well as A.I. I tried a factory reset after installing the latest firmware update but no luck on improvement. I've also read that a manual pixel cleanup launch can help, but I'm cautious about using it until the TV informs me its time to do so. Any thoughts?

[@hdmoviesource]

What you could do is use the accurate mode, whichever the C2 has, but use the day mode version of that. This would allow the display to raise the gamma faster, so it would get out of black faster and would increase black-level detail. I would give that a try, and see. If you could afford it you could get a professional calibration, or check out one of my other videos of calibrating your display with a phone app, and yes it really works.

[@Australia852]

In the Dynamic Range it doesn't affect the brightness. What it does if you go lower eg -6 if gives more dynamic range. The + setting affects the dynamic range by compressing the picture more. You would really want more dynamic range.

[@hdmoviesource]

I've found that it brightens all the picture, and gives better black level detail by raising it up to +2 Snowy. Atleast on a C9.

[@Australia852]

@HD MOVIE SOURCE there is no right or wrong as tv displays are different from each other. My sony TV I also have to raise it because I get black pixelation which is rubbish but my jvc NX projector I go down to.-6.

[@hdmoviesource]

Agreed.

[@MassAwesomeOne]

Great video Carl. Got a question, I have a C2 and a UB820. I've noticed in dark movies I get some slight haloing around dark, fast moving objects. Is anything you've come across? Motion smoothing is all off. You're definitely very knowledgeable about LG OLEDs and the Panasonic players so figured you'd be a good person to ask.

[@hdmoviesource]

Hmmm, not sure. If it was me I'd try anything to see if I can improve it. Obviously all motion settings off apart from real cinema if you have that option on the C2. There might be a setting to improve color banding, I'd turn that off and any digital noise reduction or mpeg noise reduction should be off because they can cause blurring. Might wanna check different modes like cinema and filmmaker mode to see if it still does it. If you've tried everything is run a burn in on the TV. Meaning I'd run the TV, non stop for 3 days straight using bright HDR content. Because it could be a simple pixel burn in issue. Meaning it needs to be used for so many hours. Running it for 3 days straight will make the pixels hot. Then keep it off for at least over night. This will let the pixels rest. The heat expands things and once fully burns in could potentially help with this effect. That's what I'd try if I had that issue.

[@adamATOM3]

Unfortunately, that is a problem with oled technology. The pixels on the edges can get overcharged when coming out of black. In Wakanda forever when the more first appears, it’s almost unwatchable on my TV.

[@hdmoviesource]

Agreed, it's definitely a problem with OLEDs.

[@pietroscarpa2384]

You have turned on the HDR optimizer. I noticed that my Panasonic oled tv does a much better job with the tone mapping than my Panasonic dp-ub820 bluray player. Did you do some testing with your LG TV?

[@hdmoviesource]

Thats great, if your TV can handle this then you may not need the HDR optimizer at all.

[@allencress5224]

@hdmoviesource on my vizio p series which picture preset should i have it on before using the HDR optimizer?

[@hdmoviesource]

Is there a cinema mode or dark mode? That would be the most accurate before any type of calibration.

[@allencress5224]

@@hdmoviesource there is vivid,sports,calibrated, calibrated dark, game and sports

[@hdmoviesource]

Calibrated dark will be the most accurate.

[@johnplassay1612]

any suggestions for the ub9000 with a jvc x790 projector?

[@hdmoviesource]

Yes, what you can do is change HDR to output in SDR and keep the rec2020 color space. I believe that's the best thing to do for projectors. This doesn't put the projector into high-power mode and makes tons of noise. It also keeps the color space of HDR movies too. Give it a try John.

[@johnplassay1612]

@@hdmoviesource Thank you

[@Dom593]

@@hdmoviesourcehey I have a Samsung qn900c 8k do I turn the optimiser on or off ? And do I keep my tone mapping for the tv on or off ?

[@hdmoviesource]

You could use this disc and see if it looks better on or off.

[@adamATOM3]

So do you keep +3 with dynamic range all the time or just for dark movies?

[@hdmoviesource]

I use +2 for all movies that are HDR. Doesn't apply to Dolby Vision, just HDR10.

[@adamATOM3]

@@hdmoviesource thanks!

[@hdmoviesource]

Anytime.

[@randybradley4151]

I know this doesn't have anything to do with this video but do you know how to get rid of the staticky speckles on the top and bottom of the screen. Many have said to try different HDMI cords which I have done so to no avail. At the moment I just zoomed my horizontal in the LG C9 picture settings.

[@hdmoviesource]

Hi Randy. Yes. I picked up a Cinnamon HDMI Cable from Audioquest, fixed all the issues I was having and I had the same issues as you. I tried 10 cables and all failed. This cable was the only cable that did it. www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Cinnamon-8K-10K-48Gbps-Cable/dp/B08J8H9XNZ/

[@MrHallTV]

Mine went away once I updated firmware. Out of the box I had the sparkles, thought it was the cable. Updated FW and they are gone.

[@hdmoviesource]

Really, interesting.

[@hitthesynth6417]

​​@@hdmoviesource what is the problem you're talking about?

[@hdmoviesource]

White sparkles at the top of the image. Typically, you think the HDMI is bad, but this happened on every HDMI cable I tested. The only cable that didn't do this is the Cinnamon HDMI Cable from AudioQuest, so that's the only HDMI cable I recommend now.

[@stevedave42swag37]

the HDR Opitmaziter is for 4k or blu ray or both

[@hdmoviesource]

4K only.

[@stevedave42swag37]

@@hdmoviesource so can a stander blu ray have 4k resoution or HDR optimaziter

[@hdmoviesource]

Yes, the player upscales Blu-rays to 4K.

[@hdmoviesource]

@@stevedave42swag37 4K only.

[@hitthesynth6417]

Just picked up my 820 to pair with my 55G3 and after finishing my second UHD DV movie I'm losing my mind. Letterbox black bars are elevated so slightly only visible in perfect dark (except for the 1500 nits bouncing of my white ceiling 😂) it is not a gamma or hdmi black level mismatch (tested with color control and forcing the wrong settings to check). Tried evt. Switching hdmi cable and hdmi ports on the TV, settings on the 820... Internal app (at least amazon prime) in dolby vision don't raise the letterbox (but in the same time cant find the same movie to compare but seems to crush more than the 820). In the end i just tried to deactivate the DC and go with hdr10. No black raise at all even with HDR settings all by default on the 820 (very high luminance lcd selected). So finally i tried to use black level slider and 48 instead of 50 seems to work but also seems to crush a little bit the movie (47 definitely crush). So I will live with knowing i need to crush a little to make those letterbox disappear while i wait the possibility to get a professional calibrator to look at this as i dont seem to find a solution. Letterbox are perfect black and i wish i would know how to get this back to perfect black without either crushing the lower curve of eotf or having to pay 700 to custom calibrate my dolby vision 😔 in the end i dont even know if this is the fault of my tv or my 820 as it doesn't happen with internal app (last test i could do is trying amazon prime on the 820 in DV)

[@hdmoviesource]

Interesting. I use a calibrator named Chad B. He calibrated my display and got my blacks absolutely perfect.

[@hitthesynth6417]

@@hdmoviesource thx for the name, unfortunately I leave in France where we have less than a handful of calibrators and the rarity of them, low demand and economy of the country for small businesses make it so the calibration is at least 650 for basic one up to 1000 for 3d lut on all tv picture mods (need to get HDR/SDR/DV calibration, not even to mention if you use different types of sources)

[@hdmoviesource]

Okay.

[@hdmoviesource]

Me either, I want to maximize both formats when I have them.

[@hitthesynth6417]

Her with news got a new 820 out of the box, DV still have elevated blacks (not huge only what I talked in original post) so it could be my G3 overcompensating for black crush only with DV from HDMI but not with internal apps. Last stuff I have to test is DV with 4.4.4 passthrough option off on my tv as I had it on all the time but just realized it was disabling some option (like real cinema and almost any option like that). Maybe I miss something I thought 4.4.4 passthrough was needed for 4.4.4 and highest fidelity but without it the tv still says it is receiving and displaying a 4.4.4 signal (forcing the 4.4.4 on 820 to get the chroma up sampling all the time)

[@zztop7000]

Dolby Cinema is the future not Dolby vision..

[@hdmoviesource]

Possibly.