Panasonic has introduced its first Ultra HD Blu-ray player that supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and voice control through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. The Japanese electronics giant announced the device during CES 2018, currently held in Las Vegas.
This year Panasonic plans to introduce the DP-UB820, DP-UB420, DP-UB330 and DP-UB320 Ultra HD Blu-ray players. All devices come with company’s second-generation HCX Processor and all can be controlled by voice through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
The DP-UB820 is Panasonic's flagship and together with the DP-UB420 they are the only devices that support HDR10+, an open, royalty free update to HDR10 developed by Panasonic, Samsung and 20th Century Fox. It adds dynamic metadata that can be used to more accurately adjust brightness levels on a scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame basis. Where the DP-UB820 will have HDR10+ support out of the box, the DP-UB420 will get support through a planned firmware update.
The DP-UB820 will also feature Dolby Vision, a competing HDR standard supported by most Hollywood studios and also by Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and Netflix.
All devices are powered by Panasonic's second generation HCX processor and come with a technology Panasonic calls Optimum HDR. The latter should be able to create a more stable HDR picture quality to add detail back into the picture if the television you are watching it on isn't capable.
The DP-UB820 will also support 7.1 channel audio and the outputs are gold plated to protect against oxidation. The device also has two HDMI outputs, to separate audio and video which should result in less unwanted noise and high quality audio. The DP-UB420 will also have the two HDMI outputs.
Both devices also support Ultra HD / 4K Video on Demand services like Amazon, Netflix and Youtube. All players can handle 4K recorded movies stored in the MP4 format and 4K pictures stored in the JPEG format.
Prices of the devices are unknown, just like the availability.
