Panasonic DMP-UB700

 It’s still a very shiny device, still more premium-looking than Samsung’s UBD-K8500, but the nice glossy finish is now only on the front and top surfaces. The sides have a standard dull metal finish. It’s also a little shorter, because the UB900’s damping feet have been chucked out.

On the front, there is a tiny display peeking out from behind the two-way mirror finish. It’s great that this feature has been kept, because it’s very useful being able to tell what the player is up to. It also allows the player to say hello and goodbye. Manners are important.

 Like the UB900, the UB700 has UHD Premium certification. It pumps out 4K and HDR at up to 60 frames per second, and boasts a brightness output up to 10,000 nits. There is also a 4K high-precision chroma processor, and you can expect the player cover the BT.2020 colour gamut.

The connections have been stripped back. There are no longer any analogue audio outputs, and no digital coaxial output either. What you get are the key bits: twin HDMI output for separating audio and video channels, a digital optical output, an SD card slot, a USB port and an Ethernet socket. You won’t want to use the built-in Wi-Fi for 4K video streams, available from the YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Video apps, if you can avoid it.

 The UB900’s fancy remote has been replaced with the standard Panasonic Blu-ray player remote that’s been knocking about for years. It’s easy to use, but I sure will miss the backlighting feature.

Internally, the DAC and analogue circuitry have been re-jigged. Panasonic tells me this means the UB700’s sound won’t be quite up to the UB900’s standards, but picture quality should be virtually identical.

I’ll be frank: it was impossible to verify Panasonic’s claims. A trade show stand is hardly the best place to test picture and sound quality, as I had no control over lighting conditions or display settings, and there wasn’t a chance to do an A-B comparison between the UB700 and UB900. And there was no audio to speak of.

That being said, what I saw was impressive. Test favourite The Lego Movie was on display and, indeed, everything was awesome. The picture was plenty sharp, plenty colourful and plenty punchy. The entire point of 4K Blu-ray is a more insightful picture than anything in Full HD 1080p, and in that respect I say it’s job done. The conditions may have been far from ideal, but even so it is obvious that the DMP-UB700 has no problem making UHD Blu-rays look great.

The Panasonic DMP-UB700 does not have THX certification. That technically means its picture is inferior to that of the UB900, and Panasonic admits there should be minor differences, especially in colour gradation. From the little that I saw, I couldn’t confidently identify any differences. Expect some in-depth scrutiny when we get the UB700 in for a full review.