Jordan O'BrienPanasonic has updated its line-up of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players with three new models at CES 2017, with each supporting the BT.2020 set of standards and having been certified by the Ultra HD Alliance.
The DMP-UB400, DMP-UB310 and DMP-UB300 have been designed with future-proofing in mind. By supporting the BT.2020 set of video standards the Blu-ray players should more than easily handle future format changes and even higher resolutions, such as 8K, in the future.
The new Panasonic Ultra HD Blu-ray players also promise better image quality than competitor models. This is because they ship with Panasonic’s Hollywood Laboratory’s HCX processor, which was universally praised on the company’s UB900 and UB700 models that launched in 2016.
Both models are slightly different, with the DMP-U400 featuring twin HDMI outputs, so audio to an amplifier can be completely isolated from the video information being sent to a display. The DMP-UB300 and UB310 are missing this feature however.
Despite that, all models support high-resolution video and audio formats, including WAV, FLAC, ALAC and DSD, as well as 4K Video on Demand services, such as Netflix and Amazon Video.
The networking capabilities is where the three models slightly differ – the DMP-UB400 and UB310 both feature Wi-Fi, while the UB300 only ships with an Ethernet port.
As far as a release date or price, then that’s anyone’s guess. Panasonic has yet to confirm how much any of the three Blu-ray players are, although it reassured that both the UB400 and UB300 will see a UK launch.