Quote:Top Pick Ultra High Definition Blu-ray: Panasonic UHD Player

Leave it to Panasonic, with its ability to work with the movie industry closely through its Broadcast and Professional division and its Hollywood Research Lab, to come up with the world’s first UHD Blu-ray disc player.

We were fortunate to view the unit being set-up by Panasonic engineers to confirm it did indeed play a Ultra High Definition Blu-ray demo disc feeding Panasonic’s Top Pick Award-winning CX850.

The new format’s capabilities go far beyond 3840 x 2160 resolution. The new players and discs will be able to play 4K UHD up to 60 fps (frames per second, currently almost all movies are shot at 24 fps). Plus, a number of 2015 top UHD TVs will be able to accept and play 10-bit video (1024 gradations between black and white) as opposed to the 8-bit (256 gradations) limitation of HDTV Blu-ray, cable and broadcast content. The player can also accept and send HDR and wide color gamut metadata to UHD TVs that can accept it.

Panasonic expects to ship the player before the end of 2015.