Panasonic DMR-UBT1GL-K
VerifiedMPNs: 12698 and DMR-UBT1GL-K14 reviews
Can't Stream ABC and SBS – I purchased DMR-UBT1 from Videopro earlier this year . After unsuccessfully trying to set up free to air streaming the Panasonic support site for this machine informs that we streaming of ABC and SBS (our Australian national broadcasters!) is no longer supported due to unspecified updates by the content providers. There is no firmware update… Read more
mentioned to fix the issue with the machine and they mention incompatible hardware which means it is now just a very expensive and hard to operate DVD player. I have a a number of connected display devices around my hone and the limitation makes this device no longer fit for my purposes as a centralised home network media player/recorder. So now I have do some sort of messy reverse DLNA setup from a far more capable device (A USB streaming stick - about $29 at Amazon, Ebay, etc). I have purchased Panasonic projectors,audio equipment and cameras in the past however thats not likely in the future due to concerns of premature obscelesnce like this device.
Does what it says on the box – This player does exactly what it says on the box. Setup was super easy, and the unit offers overall pretty good customisation of the UI. Whilst the UI is a bit dated, it is still easy to navigate. The keyword recording feature works well, and I haven’t ever had it cut off recordings. The ‘smart player’ features aren’t the best, but I didn’t buy it… Read more · 1
for those features. I wouldn’t pay the $900 it normally retails for, but on sale it was $660 which is quite good value for a 4K blu-ray 2TB player.
Load of crap – This machine sucks there is conflicting recordings for the cost of this machine $900. I have had plenty of pvr this I would rate this below zero if o could it is the worst pvr on the market. I have a Topfield 2400 masterpiece I had for 15 years and and it will record all that you want 900 is a waste of money sholdfor 99 cents and that to much send your programmers back to uni and get it right don’t buy don’t buy your wasting you money kevin Show details
Expensive, lacking in aged firmware, cannot record and watch live concurrently – This replaced a beyonwiz, who had terrible customer service) and while the Panasonic features are impressive, it fails to play sound on some recordings. no firmware upgrades avail and basically an expensive 4k DVD player. Difficult to set up, adjust fonts, views of listings, unlike beyonwiz. Show details
The device is very difficult to install. I couldn't install, I need help – I bought a Panasonic Dmr ubt 1 gl brand device on 02/08/2021. I haven't been able to install for two days. Internet connection is fine, but when i try to login to netflix and other internet application it says no internet connection. If Panasonic authorized service does not help me, I will throw the device in the trash. Show details
Good recorder, but what on earth were Panasonic thinking when they designed the remote control?? – This is at least the 5th similar Panasonic device that I have owned (starting with a tuner/DVD player, then digi-recorders etc). So that says I am very pleased with them - 4 are still in use. BUT: There is a fundamental issue with this latest offering. It now has an 'auto-search' feature, where it looks for breaks in the recording (eg to get… Read more
to the ads and to where the program re-starts after the ad), which works very well some of the time, but is generally too sensitive, which is frustrating. But that is OK, at a pinch. So what's the problem? There is no way to create your own chapter mark!! Which means that, if you want, for example, to mark a spot so you can revert to it, to show someone or whatever, you can't do it. At least, not with the supplied remote control. The older remotes, which have this feature, will do it just fine. So it's not in the recorder itself, it's just a button missing in the remote. So, please, Mr Panasonic, please send me an older type of remote for me to use!! And, while I'm at it, why do you keep changing the layout of the buttons? Believe it or not, it's too dark to read what each button does, so with (now) all those different remotes on the go it gets quite confusing. And that 'Netflix' button right above the fast-forward button on this latest one is far too easy to hit by mistake!
I'm also very disappointed at the way the remotes stop working, button-by-button, until they are taken apart (difficult to do without damaging the case) and cleaned. This works a few times, then eventually they need to be replaced, and the cycle starts again.
Hi Roger, please call us on 132600 and our customer service team can assist with the remote.
Cheers
Flagship unit not supported with firmware updates since 2017 – Prior to purchasing the DMR-UBT1GL-K i looked around to see what PVR supported full 4K play/recording & multi tuner capability. On paper this unit had excellent specifications & at first glance seemed perfect for our requirements. On further investigation & checking customer reviews I realised that there appears to be issues that would require… Read more
firmware updates to overcome known limitations, codecs & youtube support etc.
On approaching Panasonic customer support I was provided with link to latest firmware revision for the unit, that being rev1.05 dated 28th Sept 2017.
Please note the support supplied by phone & follow up email by Panasonic staff was exemplary.
I download the file to confirm that yes the firmware for this device has remained the same since 2017 & the issues faced by customers in Australia since then have not been addressed.
This unit currently retails around AUD $900 to AUD $1000 in Australia, certainly not a low cost or budget PVR by any means.
Lucky for me I did my homework prior to purchase as this would have been a very costly mistake.
Still looking for a true 4K PVR with minimum twin tuners & customer support that ensures my new product functions & supports fully Australian content.
worst product ever released by panasonic, never buy again : my wife got so frustrated she put out for recycling – Switched off never worked again lost channels recordings were erratic playback tried to reset it never worked properly from day one. Repeatedly get no signal message switched it off and on then time it wou6not come back on. Show details
Hi Roger, sorry to hear about the fault you had with… Read more
Problems with remote not responding – Started having delayed remote response, checked and replaced batteries and still not working staying in standby even after resetting power, no buttons AT ALL on front panel and therefore MAJOR FAILURE and out of warranty. Show details
Hi Emanuel, sorry to hear about the fault with your… Read more
Crap – Change channel you sometimes get a message saying no signal (happens too often) only way to get stations back is to turn the unit off and on again. Sometimes the recording freezes, the record lights on and it records nothing. It also forgets to record the next show. Picture glitches (and sound) frequently. Rubbish taking it back to the shop for a refund. Never buy Panasonic again, don't trust their products. Show details
Fails on both the basics and modern standards – Has no actual buttons on the unit, just non-responsive sensors. My unit has the front panel permanently down with my labelling showing where to feel around, but still takes several goes for sensor to detect. Put the actual buttons back you have failed with no buttons, no LEDs, no visible labelling and non-responsive software. And dont even get me… Read more
started on how much TiVo designed 30 years ago is. Just about ready to throw this to land fill. The amount of times it cant perform or flashes a message refuses to perform a basic function without 10 clicks blows my mind. Loved TiVo, hate this and forced me to go to Netflix. Purchase date may be off slightly.
Hi David, this does sound like there could be an issue… Read more
Good picture and sound. Let down by controls placed on functionality – The Panasonic DMR-UBT1GL-K provides excellent picture quality and audio clarity. These are its main strengths. It has diverse, potentially complex connections and functionality, for storage and recording. These are useful dependant upon the type of audiovisual system you want to connect it with. The DLNA enables access to music and video files… Read more
stored on a laptop which is good. But the menus that get displayed for these music/video files from the blu ray recorder are not the same as what is on those hard drives of the laptops. This makes it very difficult to organise playlists the way I want them. They are organised under some Panasonic controlled menu system. I enquired into this with Panasonic and they write back saying: -
"The menus(music,videos,playlist and games) that you see on the DLNA are the folders under libraries on your computer. Check the libraries on your computer to see what are the files being shared to the recorder."
Miracast is only available for phones and not for laptops/desktops so this streaming functionality is not useful for me.
The inability to directly record CD music content onto the hard drive is a very major Corporate controlled fundamental problem with this blu ray recorder. I purchased the product for easy access to all of my music and first of all found out that Panasonic have *regulated and enforced* Corporate controls upon copying music onto the blu ray hard drive. This is a *DISGRACE* as far as I am concerned. Very simple function that used to be on Panasonic blu ray recorder I previously owned, but now no longer *allowed* due to *CORPORATE CONTROL* placed on so called copyright. What a pathetic disgrace that is. All I want is good access to music I have purchased but the *CORPORATE CONTROL* that Panasonic have bought into does not allow it.
Overall the product is good but was complicated to fit into my overall audiovisual system. The Panasonic DMR-UBT1GL-K initially took control of my Onkyo receiver which meant the volume functionality of the receiver was initially disabled. This meant the 175 watts per channel available through my Onkyo receiver was disabled and the only sound volume initially available to me was through the TV. The lack of an HDMI ARC port on my Onkyo receiver caused this problem which I initially thought meant I needed to buy another receiver that had an HDMI ARC port on the back of it. This problem was overcome as the Panasonic DMR-UBT1GL-K comes with a coaxial audio port but without an optical port or any second HDMI port. So I only really needed to buy some coaxial cable and now my entire audiovisual system is operating powerfully and well. So if you are considering buying this blu ray recorder and plugging it into a receiver that does not have an HDMI ARC port, this receiver will definitely need to have a coaxial audio port on the back of it. The DMR-UBT1GL-K does not have optical port for audio signals and only one HDMI ARC port. The HDMI ARC port deals with video and audio signals but without HDMI ARC port on the receiver means that the audio signals must be channelled differently. This audio channeling is achieved via coaxial audio only and not optical audio ports and cables. So the leftover audio signals in a receiver that does not have an HDMI ARC port can only be fed into a coaxial port.
This blu ray recorder seems to be designed for those that watch lots of free to air television. The value you get out of the blu ray recorder comes from the ABC HD channel that provides very good picture quality with no commercials. There are other HD channels but these come with commercials. This free to air functionality does not really suit me as I didn't really watch any free to air TV. I wanted the blu ray recorder to store music and have ease of functionality with music. The Panasonic DMR-UBT1GL-K does not achieve this musical functionality for the following reasons: -
1) Corporate controls placed on recording music from CD's onto the hard drive. 2) Generally poor playlist functionality associated with the DLNA technology. The music files are all over the place and hard to incorporate into a functional playlist.
So since buying this product I have resorted to recording programs on the ABC HD channel which I have found better than I thought it would be. One good feature for me is the ability to store all of my photo files from my Panasonic GH5 camera onto the two terabyte hard drive of the blu ray recorder. Then view them all nicely on the 4K TV screen. This is a good bonus. Same good value goes for the video files from the GH5.
The sound clarity and picture quality are excellent. The functionality is high tech, potentially very good but also potentially troublesome depending on your audiovisual system. Once you get any problems sorted out though, the DMR-UBT1GL-K provides a very useful and quality enhanced tool for storing, viewing, listening to the file types that are *allowed* to be stored on its hard drive. The restricted controls placed on copying music files from a CD onto the hard drive of the blu ray recorder is pathetic. All for what Panasonic calls copyright protection. This is *rubbish* as it is all Corporate control. This control gets regulated and enforced upon consumers powerfully illustrating the *Corporate dominance* of music inflicted upon all consumers. Would say Panasonic is definitely not alone in this Corporate control of music but it is very disappointing to see Panasonic buy into this control.
True Flagship Picture Quality – As a consumer, you seem to get what you pay for - consumer electronics seem to be no exception to this rule. As an upgrade for my cherished 560 model Panasonic DMR, which is now in my bedroom, I recently purchased a Panasonic UBT1 unit to take full advantage of my Pana 4K HDR TV - I was recommended this unit by several salesmen at two different… Read more · 1
but corporately united stores (you can guess which). The UBT1 was a lot of money, even with an end-of-financial-year discount, a few dollars change from $700. You have to put this in context of a generic blu ray player and set top box DMR also available in 2019 from the supermarket chains in Australia for roughly less than $200...the UBT1 is quite a different animal...However, I took the calculated gamble, mentally embarking on a bread and water diet for at least two months, and took my shiny new UBT1 unit home with me. This is where the 'however' comes in - I have not seen any picture quality quite like the image that comes from this unit when hooked up to my TV using Belkin HDMI cables; it is (if you'll forgive my hyperbolic vocabulary choices) breathtaking and somewhat celestial; yep, sorry, but the picture quality reaches that high. And I'm talking with regular, bog-standard run of the mill standard definition DVDs. There is a clarity and smoothness at the same time that I have never seen with any other machine. What is under the hood must indeed be spectacular and worth every cent. This is upscaling like never before. Panasonic have always done this the best but this is out of this world quality in terms of depth, colour saturation and black levels. Blu rays take this to the next level and 4K UHD discs like the recently released Alien 40th Anniversary edition look exceptionally cinematic, detailed and vivid; Hollywood at home says Panasonic's processing lingo? When I was at the cinema as recently as last week, the picture didn't look this good...Recorded images using the hard drive, like the 560 model, look like you've recorded a blu ray disc when playing back the recording. Top marks? Negatives? Hard copy booklet manual is a little confusing in places ie set up. As another reviewer has noted, the eject button is hard to see and use. There are some operational quirks with this machine but, boy, if you are looking for the best sound and picture quality at far less than the UB9000 model, the UBT1 is in a class of its own. Best picture quality at a premium but not absurd money? Check. Build quality to last the years? Check. Supreme upscaling of standard definition DVDs, which are still much cheaper than other formats? Check. Does this review crystallise my online status as a Panasonic fanboy? If they keep bringing out products like the UBT1, then, CHECK! Brilliant brand, brilliant product.
Fundamentally flawed – I have had the opportunity to spend the last three weeks with this 4K blu-ray player / DVD recorder and DVR, which my father purchased as supposedly "the rolls-royce" (because it costs $900). There are a few things I wanted to highlight about why this device is an absolute nightmare to use, and is fundamentally flawed. 1. You can't… Read more
channel-skip through TV channels.
I take it for granted with my current Samsung and LG devices (and for that matter, every TV or VCR I've had since the mid 1980s) that you can casually use the "Channel up" and "Channel down" buttons on the remote to change TV channels. Hit the last one (SBS or Channel 31) and it should jump back to the beginning (One or ABC).
Apparently as a Gen-X, my expectations are out of date and don't align with what Panasonic says we should be expecting from a modern DVB device.
Yes, the "Channel up" and "Channel down" buttons do change channels, but NOT just the TV channels - you have to contend with all of the RADIO channels mixed into the mix. Maybe 15 years ago when all those radio channels were up in the high numbers past SBS this wasn't so big a deal - but now they are down low, SBS Radio has channels 37 through 39, then you have TV channels 44, 70, and so on up to 90 and then 99 - then it jumps to 200 for Double J radio, along with a bunch more radio channels up to 307, then back ultimately to 11 (Since I have a 4K TV I delet all of the duplicated and non-HD versions of channels). So you have patches of TV channels intermingled all the way through with radio channels - and you can't just change between the TV channels.
On other sensible tuners, you would have three different categories of channels - "TV", "Radio", and "All". While Panasonic have given you an "All" and a "Radio" category .. the "TV" category is completley missing - yes, that's right, you can flick between the radio channels, but you CANNOT flick only between the TV channels. Even worse is that there is no way to define new categories of channels to only include the TV channels (not that I should have to do so).
This alone would me enough to drive me nuts about this device, but the next is even worse.
2. There is NO eject button for the disc drive
Well there may as well not be. When I first arrived at my parents' and my father told me he had a "wonderful new blu ray player" to replace the Xbox One S that I set up for him the previous year, I looked at this thing and said "there's no disc drive", tried everything for about 15 minutes. While I could see something that LOOKED like a drive, I could not find any way to open it or put a disc into it.
So I declared "nope" and left it until the next day when my dad arrived back and I said "what's the deal with this stupid thing?", to which he exclaimed "Oh it's very simple, the eject is on the other side". What? The other side? "No", I said, "there's no eject button, I looked. And it is not 'very simple', otherwise I would have found it". Sure enough, he pulled out a flashlight from a drawer, and shined it on the TOP of the device, and there next to the invisible power button, was an invisible eject button. On the opposite side of the player, to where the drive is.
Now again call me old fashioned, but not only should the eject button be NEXT to the drive tray (or slot), but it should also be VISIBLE and TACTILE. In a dark hifi cabinet I should be able to see it, and feel it. It should be obvious, I shouldn't have to grab a flashlight and get a lesson from my 75-year-old father on how to eject the tray.
Not only this, but remember how I said it was next to an invisible power button? It is completely impossible to know whether you are pressing the eject button or the power button... well I say "press" when you actually don't do any pressing - they are touch sensitive areas on the outside of the case, so you have no idea whether you have pressed the button, or just next to it on the bit of plastic that doesn't do anything. Because it's all exactly the same. And there's no depression or bump to tell you if you have hit the button. Or beep to tell you you got it.
And ... unlike the tray on every other device I know, it can take 10 or more seconds before it even responds to the eject command - you can press it, and it will sit there completely silent for ages before it decides to actually eject the disc. Know what other option takes 10 or more seconds for any response, with no other visible cue? Turning it off. Yes, there's two invisible buttons, next to each other, with no feedback, one ejects the disc (eventually), and the other turns the power off (eventually). So you touch the eject button in the dark, and it doesn't do anything, so you move your finger over a bit to try to find it, and you hit the power button, and it reacts ... and turns off. And you have to wait for it to finish turning off, then turn it back on again, then start all over again to find the magic eject button. Or go and find that flashlight.
I cannot comprehend what the UI designers were doing when somebody said "let's move the eject button away from the disc tray, next to the invisible power button ... and make it also invisible". I can only assume that they were asleep ... or had been fired.
I should also add, that there is NO other button on this device. Not a single one. And there is also no 'eject' button on the remote - just that alone would make it forgivable that the one on the device was so stupid, but alas I think the only optical device I have ever had with an 'eject' on the remote was my Pioneer DVD player from circa 2001.
3. It. Is. Slow.
I'm used to an Xbox One S for playback of my 3D and 4K movies, which is a pretty darn fast machine, in sheer CPU grunt. But it's also cheap compared with this device - only a third of the cost.
What is REALLY obvious when you go through the disc startup on the DMR-UBT1 is that every switch in video format takes a LONG time. When playing a 3D disc, such as Men In Black 3, this means that through the startup / preview / menu / logo and finally the movie, it flicks between 2D and 3D and 2D and 3D and 2D and 3D (I know this because both the DMR-UBT1 and the TV (a LG 65" OLED) display a message on each transition) ... with each taking a few seconds to stabilise and sync .. it is excruciatingly painfully slow.
And this is not just isolated to the playback - going through the menus is the familiar Panasonic system that I have seen quite a few times - which are unresponsive, unintuitive, and really quite poor to use, compared with what I'm used to (both the 2016-era LG WebOS and the Samsung 2018 interfaces are far more responsive and pleasurable to use).
4. It copies DVDs. Slowly. If they're unprotected. Barely.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ability to copy an unprotected DVD onto the hard disk. I could even then burn it onto a blank DVD-R.
BUT
It did not copy any chapter marks, so the only way to skip through single 2-hour video was using the fast forward / rewind.
There was no way to copy it back onto a USB flash drive (or if there was, it didn't work - since it didn't recognise my USB flash drive that I inserted).
And ... it took 2 hours to copy it to the hard disk. And another 2 hours to burn it back to the DVD-R.
So if you have a PC with a DVD burner - you are much better off with using that. The burning function on this device is barely functional.
While I haven't really used the DVR functionality, neither has my father. My main purpose has been to watch blu ray discs - and the simple fact that this has no visible or usable eject button makes it fundamentally flawed for that purpose.
Hi Denis, thank you for taking the time to provide such… Read more
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Hi there, Thank you for your feedback on this product.… Read more