I do miss the ability to play SACD's - and I do think the Pioneers, especially the LX800 are arguably better built again than the DP-UB9000.
The LX800 is considerably more money than the UB9000, Oppo 203, Cambridge CXUHD or any of the cheaper Panasonics -- so it's kind of in a class by itself. For that money, I'd expect it to be better built than those decks. Heck, it's even more expensive than Oppo's mighty 205, and that's sayin' something...
But I wish I was in a position like a lot of the lads here were in, being that if SACD was important to them, they merely skipped over the UB9000 and went for one of the Pioneer twins (depending on an individual's budget); what do I mean by that? Well, I have never been in the market for an SACD or DVD-Audio player, being that I never bought into the formats, sticking to old-fashioned redbook CD and vinyl instead (even if I had gotten into them, I prefer to keep my two-channel music listening separate in a secondary system from the home cinema, using a dedicated disc player...but I understand there are those SACD/DVD-A fans who enjoy surround projects from their favorite artists on those formats), but what WAS important to me were a number of things the Panasonics just don't offer -- including the zoom modes, aspect ratio manipulation, resume playback, more intuitive front panel display, etc.
I WISH I could have made the conscious decision to say "I don't want the UB9000 because of all these things..." but we were in a tough spot at the time: My demands dictated that we have a heavy, well-built, aluminum-encased UHD Blu-ray Disc player (i.e. premium) and since our Cambridge CXUHD wasn't functioning properly with DVDs (and had been sent back to the repair center twice for the same issue), Oppo wasn't making its players anymore and no one else was offering a unit that wasn't endowed with oodles of plastic -- plus the fact that the Pioneers went out of stock during the pandemic resurgence -- we had absolutely no choice but to purchase the UB9000.
Reading around a few different sites, there are comments as to the quality of components used in the 9000, re the capacitors, the motor type used in the drive, the use of a failure prone fan etc such as to mark it down from being a 'flagship' product.
If true, this is disheartening, but somewhat not surprising, if only for the fact that the disc drive on the 9000s tend to make a "grinding through the sand" noise when opening and, mainly, closing; don't get me wrong -- the chassis and drive tray seem to be super-rigid and the drawer seems to suck discs in for loading in a whisper-quiet fashion, but there are times when the drive makes a "sand in the gears" sound that's a bit off-putting for a flagship product.
That may or may not be true; I don't have the electronic parts expertise or knowledge of exactly what is in the 9000 to comment, but at double the price I would hope and expect an LX800 Pioneer to be noticeably better in this regards. And I like the idea of a closed box that doesn't need fans for cooling and to drag dust and detritus into the innards.
Indeed, this goes back to how much more expensive the LX800 -- NOT the 500, which is more in line with what the UB9000 costs -- is.
However, on picture and sound quality on movies - which is the main reason I bought mine, along with the pride of ownership a nicely finished box confers, and the very nice backlit remote, I am still pretty much gobsmacked by what I'm seeing.
I watched a 1080p Bluray the other night - "Elizabeth" with Kate Blanchet and Joseph Fiennes, and would have to say the picture quality is by far the best, as in most realistic and authentic I've ever seen out of my system since I first expanded my two channel setup into AV. Simply stunning picture quality, and overall at the price being asked for the player, a sensational and high VFM buy imho.
Your comments about this unit's 1080p Blu-ray upconversion abilities exactly mirrors what we see, as well, through the 9000 -- discs look unbelievably detailed, rich in color and just, in an overall fashion, better than what we've ever seen using our Oppo BDP-83, Panasonic DMP-BD10A or Cambridge CXUHD. I believe this can all be credited to the Panasonic's Chroma Upsampling feature which uses the multi-tap algorithm, thus boosting color volume, depth and richness.
I'm kind of torn on the remote; I like the button layout and the white backlight (the CXUHD remote was a NIGHTMARE in comparison) but I wish they would have designed a different, more premium unit rather than just throwing the same one they used with the UB900 in the box...
However, like your good self, had I a really large and significant collection of SACD's, I may have been persuaded by the Pioneer LX500 - no doubt a truly excellent player in it's own right.
But as my collection of movies vastly outnumbers my SACD's, it was the 9000 for it's allegedly slightly better picture on test screens under technical review and pixel peeping.
I doubt that in the real world there would be much difference to be seen on the picture side of it - but for the price difference and also availability (Pioneers out of stock due COVID-19 and shipping) I went with the 9000. No regrets at all, but in time, funds permitting, the call of the LX800 is definitely there as all up, it's probably the best UHD 4k universal player currently on the market.
Indeed, I STILL cannot get the LX500 here in the States (I keep getting the update notice from the vendor I registered with that it's not available), so I'd STILL be waiting without a player if I hadn't purchased the UB9000. Plus, the Pioneers still don't boast HDR10+ support, which the UB9000 had out of the box.