criterionforum.org

MichaelB wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2026 4:30 pm I couldn’t care less about the ads—I accept they’re a necessary evil—but for the past few days the “checking you’re a human” infinite loop has reared its head again. I can access the board via Tapatalk (as I’m doing now), but I much prefer proper typing to doing it on a phone.

Are you using Safari?

Yes, and it's working now.

So I ended up getting the Panny UB820 and the first UHD I tried to watch, Kino‘s Nostalghia, which looked stunning, began to skip around an hour and a half in. It played fine on my UB420. Does this mean I received a bad player or can this be fixed?

EDIT: I thought it was a smudge on the disc, which I cleaned off (it was barely visible) and then the movie appeared to play fine. But tonight it happened again with another brand-new disc, no smudges. It was after about an hour and 15 minutes. Stopping the disc and restarting fixed it for like 10-15 minutes. Clearly this isn't a disc issue. The player seems to be overloading or something. Seriously frustrating.

My first UB820 was bought open box was Richer Sounds. It was a complete dud that wouldn't read any discs. They replaced it with a brand new one, as they had no others in a similar condition nationwide. Had zero player-specific problems with that one in a year since.

I'd probably want to test the discs in another drive though, as I have had consecutive brand new Blu-rays fresh out the shrinkwrap be faulty before.

Wasn't sure where to post this, as it is not a Criterion release, but does anyone have a functioning Blu-ray of the Met Opera's Bellini's I Puritani with Summers conducting, starring Netrebko, Cutler etc? I have bought this four times now. Three discs wouldn't play at all. One disc would play to halfway or so, then skip and finally die. All tried on multiple players. Seems to just be printing that browned and deteriorated like many Criterions?

Something I’ve only noticed on my new Sony Bravia (and never on my old 1080p Sony or my projector) is that black background notice screens (copyright warning etc, even Criterion‘s wacky c intro) and horribly splotched with pixelated blocks and weird streaks. Totally random from release to release. Do these screens just get shit encoding? Obviously it doesn’t matter but the first time I saw it I freaked out and thought my tv was damaged

Here's a new one for the electricians. My father texted me this morning. Two days ago he says he heard the loudest thunder he's ever heard in his life. Today, went to turn on his 4k tv and oppo and both are on the fritz. Will power on, but neither will operate. The TV turns on, but no image displayed. The CD player will turn on, clunk, and then turn off.
Anyone have an experience like this before? Or is he off his rocker and I need to go to my parents house and troubleshoot this?

Surprisingly, his amp and record player, plugged into an extension cord off the same outlet, were not impacted.

Were they not plugged into a surge protector?

Years ago I had a DVD player’s power supply die after a thunderstorm (don’t remember if it was running through a surge protector). Brownout’s and temporary power outages can cause problems that things like powerboards (power strips) with surge protection don’t always help with. Electrical gear doesn’t always deal well with power cutting off and on - not enough voltage is just as bad as too much. If there’s an outage I’ll always switch gear off at the wall until the power’s restored, just to be safe.

While the amp & turntable are likely to have have far less electronics than the other gear, it may well just be the extension lead that saved them, simply due to the further distance the electricity has to travel.

swo17 wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 2:31 pm Were they not plugged into a surge protector?

Sounds like no. Computers were, but not his entertainment set-up.

Unfortunately this is a hard lesson to learn firsthand. Get a midrange surge protector that has a light indicator confirming it is still providing surge protection (many surge protectors lose protection after experiencing a surge but still function as an outlet so you’d never know). We use Tripp in our house if you want a recommendation, but I’m sure there are many similar options on Amazon

Thank you for the tip.

Watched Sunshine on my DPUB820K Panasonic 4K player last night, and i couldn't turn off the pip behind the scenes pop ups! Its was so weird. There was no audio from the pip video, and when I tried to turn it off in the menu, the options for on and off were greyed out, but the option to play all of the videos on their own was selectable.

It was the original 2007/8 blu ray

Lost a 55" Bravia OLED in a recent breakup (which I considered an absolutely flawless unit for my needs), so I decided to splurge and upgrade to a 77" Bravia 8 OLED. Man — the vertical banding is...not great. It seems like some banding is within most manufacturer's tolerances, and some online state that banding issues get resolved after 50-100 hours of break-in and possibly a pixel refresh. For those with a Bravia 8, what's your experience with this? I'm honestly surprised given how uniform and crystal clear my dearly departed, 6-year old TV was. Just received it yesterday, so I'm well within my return period, but I don't want to deal with schlepping this huge thing around if I can avoid it.

Check your warranty. Even if you keep it beyond your return window, it should be covered by the warranty for a much longer period. A few years ago, I had a problem with a small amount of backlight bleed on a LG LED TV. After I decided I wasn't going to just live with it, a tech came out to my house to inspect it, confirmed that it was defective, and I was given a complete refund and a discount on a future LG purchase. (I opted for a Samsung instead.)

I've noticed the banding, but only faintly and in certain scenes. Is it enough to get a replacement? Is a replacement unit going to have other issues?

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about — it's a bit of a lottery, isn't it? I think the problem is exacerbated on larger displays. But yeah, it's bad; I popped in 4K discs of One Battle After Another and No Country, and the banding was totally distracting. It's been suggested to try a pixel refresh, and if things are about the same afterwards, it's going back I'm afraid...

How does one do a pixel refresh? I did notice that many of the default picture settings needed major adjustment before things looked right. Most of the automatic contrast and black level settings have to be turned off.

Thankfully my previous model was a Bravia so I knew my way around the settings. I believe most OLED TVs will perform periodic pixel refreshes on their own, but you can start one manually; Sony calls it a "Panel Refresh", not sure about other manufacturers.

I may end up returning and trying one of Sony's new Tru RGB panels.

Anybody replace a drive in a ub820?

My player has been having trouble with 4K discs the last couple months (BDs and DVDs are fine), though it's oddly inconsistent, but older discs that were fine suddenly take forever to load or don't, while loading quickly on my Sony. And then all the discs in the Carax set are grinding, while The Secret Agent loads quickly. I thought I just had problem discs at first but it's clearly the player/drive.

I ended up ordering a drive from Panasonic, a newer model (TXP0183) than the one in my player by the looks of it. Ripping the player open it looks like the connecting cable is fragile but otherwise it looks like just taking out the old and connecting the new.

With how prices have skyrocketed this was the better option (the drive is $217).