Technical Issues and Questions

[MichaelB]

Outside my budget, but fortunately I don't need most of that stuff - Dolby Vision is the only real deal-breaker.

(If I left it up to my wife, she'd undoubtedly opt for the cheapest Panasonic player, but I stand a realistic chance of talking her up to a Sony UBX-700 or similar.)

Happily, I never got round to this, and so I've just snapped up a Panasonic 820 in a Black Friday sale.

[TMDaines]

It is very annoying most soundbars have very few HDMI ports to allow you to use them as a quasi-receiver and speakers all-in-one. In my open-plan living space, I have a 4K LG TV that was gifted to me second-hand. I only discovered after receiving it that it has a faulty HDMI ARC port, which cannot be used for either input or output. It simply does not detect anything being plugged into it, with no signs of damage. Ridiculously, this does seem to be a common issue that people have fixed by literally baking the motherboard in an oven to soften solder: https://ijeyanthan.medium.com/howto-bak ... 78016646de

I'm not sure I have the minerals to try that... yet, but I do want a solution to be able to connect a small-profile soundbar to this TV as the TV speakers are poor for the majority of surround sound mixes where dialogue gets swamped. I have no interest in satellite speakers in this room, as we will eventually do our lounge up to have cinema space there with surround sound. That will be where we primarily view movies eventually, but I want something in the open-plan space in the interim as it could be another year until we get there.

A soundbar was, therefore, my preferred option to have everything plugged into the TV, whereby the TV sends the audio to the soundbar. Without ARC, however, I can't properly do this. Optical doesn't really seem to be an option as it doesn't support a lot of codecs. Alternatively, I thought I could plug everything into the soundbar, like with a receiver, and send the video to the TV, but soundbars seem to have 1 or 2 HDMI ports at most. I currently need four inputs (Amazon Fire Stick, Nintendo Switch, HTPC, UHD player), but I could live with three.

Short of replacing the TV, or gambling on baking its motherboard first, my only other alternative might well be getting a cheap receiver and stereo speakers, but that just feels quite an inelegant solution in 2025. It would cost a lot more too.

[nicolas]

Short of replacing the TV, or gambling on baking its motherboard first, my only other alternative might well be getting a cheap receiver and stereo speakers, but that just feels quite an inelegant solution in 2025. It would cost a lot more too.

The eARC port is crucial for getting optimal results with soundbars, so it’s really a tricky situation on your end. I have a Sennheiser AMBEO Max soundbar, which is pricy but I can highly recommend it as it’s got everything you’re looking for: 4 HDMI ports (one of them is eARC for connection to your TV) in total. You’re funneling your other inputs into the SB and from there onwards to your TV via eARC. The one big advantage of this is that you’ll have no playback problems with high fidelity sound (lossless DTS-HD MA, etc.) as the SB is the receiver.

If you need more ports or a good HDMI splitter in general, try this one: https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Switch-Bu ... B0FB3TZ1Q3

[TMDaines]

Yeah, I use a UGREEN one, after failing with cheaper alternatives, to switch between my HTPC and UHD player. Other devices go straight into the TV though to keep it user friendly for others.

[Zot!]

Honest question...why would you use a soundbar? The biggest reason I have a 3 speaker set-up is so I can manually play with the mix between surrounds and the center channel. Is there a way to do this via a soundbar?

[nicolas]

Honest question...why would you use a soundbar?

Space, pricing, aesthetics, sound being of less importance, neighbors, easy to use, cleaning-friendly is what comes to mind. Not all of that applies to me but it’s just a perfect middle ground. Except for upsampling, I can’t play around with the channels the way you do it but I also never had the urge or need for that.

[Zot!]

Honest question...why would you use a soundbar?

Space, pricing, aesthetics, sound being of less importance, neighbors, easy to use, cleaning-friendly is what comes to mind. Not all of that applies to me but it’s just a perfect middle ground. Except for upsampling, I can’t play around with the channels the way you do it but I also never had the urge or need for that.

Makes sense, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on something less obvious.

[MichaelB]

The overwhelming majority of what I watch is in mono, so even though I have a subwoofer and rear speakers they barely get a workout.

[Zot!]

The overwhelming majority of what I watch is in mono, so even though I have a subwoofer and rear speakers they barely get a workout.

If every disc included a nicely mixed mono or 2.0 mix, I would probably default to it. Unfortunately it's always some overly complicated surround thing that favors the sound effects, and gets recombined on my TV speakers into something totally unlistenable. Thus my need for a center channel I can control. The fact that the only English soundtrack on something like The Wizard of Oz is DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is an absolute crime.

[Lowry_Sam]

If every disc included a nicely mixed mono or 2.0 mix, I would probably default to it. Unfortunately it's always some overly complicated surround thing that favors the sound effects, and gets recombined on my TV speakers into something totally unlistenable.

I am dealing with a related issue. My primary interest is for high quality stereo sound for music as I am likely to move soon and don't want to shell out to upgrade my system until after I move. I picked up a used but recent Sony receiver cheap 2 years ago to power speakers from an even older Onkyo receiver, but I only use 2 speakers plus a center for my TV setup (I have a separate analog receiver for music). I have been trying to catch up on recent movies on dvd from my local library, however most end up having 5.1 mixes with most of the dialogue in the 2 channels I haven't set up speakers for (back?) and so I can't watch them. I have my Oppo 203 set to downmix to either LT/RT or Stereo but it doesn't seem to work, maybe the receiver is overriding my Oppo settings. I tried Conclave, but I only get music, sound effects & background whispering. When they start talking, there's no dialogue. Maybe the receiver is overriding my Oppo settings? I haven't had time to trouble shoot, maybe a soundbar would be an easy fix.

[MichaelB]

Outside my budget, but fortunately I don't need most of that stuff - Dolby Vision is the only real deal-breaker.

(If I left it up to my wife, she'd undoubtedly opt for the cheapest Panasonic player, but I stand a realistic chance of talking her up to a Sony UBX-700 or similar.)

Happily, I never got round to this, and so I've just snapped up a Panasonic 820 in a Black Friday sale.

Well, that's disappointing. I'm sure it's great as a 4K UHD player, but it's drastically inferior to my Oppo as an MKV player, with some files refusing to play at all and others refusing to play with subtitles and/or audio. And these are files that play perfectly on the Oppo.

I'm aware that MKV playback isn't the be-all and end-all of a UHD player and that many don't do it at all, but I was rather hoping to be able to save work-in-progress MKV files on a USB stick and watch them in the living room in a comfy sofa rather than in my office, and it looks as though I'm going to have to rethink that plan.

[domino harvey]

They make media reading USB only players if you want to supplement your new player. I think they’re like $40 US here

[EddieLarkin]

Ah yes sorry it's not a great file player (though basically zero players come close to the Oppo in this regard). One tip though, the sound issues are usually caused by bitstreamed lossless audio. If you switch the player to PCM the sound should then play fine from files.

[MichaelB]

Ah yes sorry it's not a great file player (though basically zero players come close to the Oppo in this regard). One tip though, the sound issues are usually caused by bitstreamed lossless audio. If you switch the player to PCM the sound should then play fine from files.

Nope, but I wasn't really expecting this to be the case. It fundamentally can't read bitstreamed audio, so that's that.

I've clearly been spoiled by the Oppo to the extent that I blithely thought that "MKV capable" meant "can play anything ending in .mkv", although I now see that the Oppo is in the tiniest of minorities.

So it looks as if I may have to go down the separate MKV player route—is there a model out there that's more versatile? In particular, I need (for professional reasons) to be able to play MKVs ripped from BD builds that are exactly as encoded, bitstreamed lossless audio and all. I can already do this in my office thanks to the Oppo, but it would be nice to be able to do it in a more comfortable setting as well (and no, I'm not going to ferry the Oppo from room to room; that way lies premature death, and I want it to last as long as possible).

[EddieLarkin]

The tricky thing with MKV is that it can by definition hold any type of video and audio file, so there's just no way to know what a given device will play without an actual published list of file formats.

Have you tried plugging a USB or external hard drive directly into your TV? My experience is that an LG OLED for instance will play more types of file than the Panny. If you have a receiver/soundbar for the audio, you'd then just use the eARC ports.

[The Curious Sofa]

I've been using a BenQ W1080ST for the last 7 years and am looking at the BenQ W2720i or the BenQ TK705STi for an upgrade. The first one has slightly better PQ for watching films but the second one is more flexible about positioning. The TK705STi also has only just come out and I'm waiting for reviews.

Similar boat. I had a W1110 since 2016 and am looking to get a
W2710, W2720, W4000 or W4100 depending on what seems best value in an upcoming clearance sale. We moved this year and haven’t had the opportunity to get the “home theatre”
lounge sorted yet.

I ended up buying a Hisense C2 Pro in the Black Friday sales as it's a short throw projector that fits my room and got great reviews. I haven't had the time to try it out yet as I'm in the middle of moving.

[therewillbeblus]

So I'm at the point where my Panasonic 820 skips on every 4K disc (blu-rays/DVDs play fine), including FiM encodes (previously the only discs that played flawlessly). I've tried swapping out HDMI cables, I bought a lens cleaner disc, I clean my discs with dish soap and a microfiber cloth... nothing changes. Am I at the point where I should just purchase another player? Or is there another, cheaper option I can try first that I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance

[WrathOfAguirre]

Can’t really help you with understanding your player, but I’m genuinely curious when I ask this: why dish soap (or any kind of detergent or cleanser at all)?

I’ve only ever needed to clean discs with a dry, microfiber cloth, and best to give it a once-over with a rocket/hand blower first, to remove loose dust/dirt/etc. before rubbing it with the microfiber (this lessens the chance of rubbing a grain of dirt or debris into the disc and causing scratches).

[therewillbeblus]

I do it because it's been recommended and worked in the past, appreciate the suggestion tho

[Matt]

I had a Panasonic 420 (not 820), and it skipped on every 4K disc. It’s definitely the player, not the discs. I replaced it with a Sony X700 and haven’t had a skip since. (My TV doesn’t have Dolby Vision, so it wasn’t a concern for me.)

EDIT: Ignore. I goofed.

[therewillbeblus]

I had a Panasonic 420 (not 820), and it skipped on every 4K disc. It’s definitely the player, not the discs. I replaced it with a Sony X700 and haven’t had a skip since. (My TV doesn’t have Dolby Vision, so it wasn’t a concern for me.)

Thanks Matt, it looks like the Sony X700 actually supports Dolby Vision(?)

My Panasonic 420 also skipped, so I upgraded to the 820 because people on this forum say it's the best. Maybe Panasonics just don't agree with me

[Matt]

Oh my goodness, what a mistake! I'm actually using the Panasonic 420 now. It was the Sony that skipped all the time. I didn't catch my error until I looked at the remote in my hand.

Is your Panasonic still under warranty? Might be worth it to make a claim.

[EddieLarkin]

The Sony X700 skips/freezes at the third layer change on BD-100s. Very well documented. I've never had a single problem with my Panny 820, so I would definitely buy a new unit. It'll be worth the stress reduction when you play discs you've had problems with before and they're fine (and if they're not, at least you can still return the unit for another).

[therewillbeblus]

The Sony X700 skips/freezes at the third layer change on BD-100s. Very well documented. I've never had a single problem with my Panny 820, so I would definitely buy a new unit. It'll be worth the stress reduction when you play discs you've had problems with before and they're fine (and if they're not, at least you can still return the unit for another).

Thank you, I just went ahead and did that with a 3-year warranty just in case. Here's hoping!

[nicolas]

Thank you, I just went ahead and did that with a 3-year warranty just in case. Here's hoping!

Good decision! Fingers crossed everything works out and you’re able to enjoy your 4K discs again!