One thing I haven't quite fathomed with this player is the black levels.
I've noticed on my Sony that, when playing a 4K HDR disc, the bars at the top and bottom aren't totally black. With all normal 1080p material, the local dimming function of the set renders these bars totally black, to the point you can't actually see them at all in a dark room. The same is the case when playing a standard Bluray in the player.
At first I thought it was a function of the TV. That, when it switches to HDR mode and ramps the backlight up to the max, the local dimming can't quite render the bars totally black. The odd thing is that 4K HDR material via Amazon Prime (such as The Grand Tour) doesn't show this issue. The set also switches to HDR mode but the bars remain totally black. It's only 4K HDR blurays from the player which show this.
At first I thought the local dimming feature was deactivating or failing for some reason but I've noticed that, when the screen fades to total black, such as after the studio idents at the start of a film, the screen does go totally black, showing the local dimming is working.
I'm starting to wonder if it's the player itself. If, for some reason, the player is actually displaying these bars at slightly-above-black levels rather than black for some reason. Has anyone else experienced this or can test it with their set, Sony or otherwise? I've reported the issue to Sony FWIW.