Tom thanks very much for comments. Could you share your Sony / Panasonic settings so we can take a look.
Is your HDR picture significantly darker overall than non HDR?
I watched The Revenant a couple of nights ago and ended up switching back to non HDR. Although the colours looked great the film is shot quiet dark and despite a blackout room too much detail was lost.
I also have a support call with Panasonic regarding online HDR content issue. I'll let you know what they come back with. In my view the player should use its UHD Bluray settings for disc AND Netflix/Amazon.
I am at my computer and not in my home theater so I am working from memory, but here goes. I adjust the contrast on the Panasonic to raise the APL and bring the darker areas of the image up to reveal detail without turning the blacks to grey. As I recall this required a brightness setting on the Panasonic close to, but not at the maximum brightness adjustment, about 8 as I recall. I adjust the brightness control to avoid clipping of the brightest whites in the scene. As I recall this is about 3. I do not need to adjust the color controls on the Panasonic on most UHD blu-ray discs other than ocassional minor adjusts to taste. With the contrast and brightness controls on the Panasonic set properly, I have a very slightly darker image (in low lamp mode) with UHD blu-ray discs than I have with standard blu-ray discs without HDR. I watched the Revenant with these adjustments and found it to be quite nice viewing experience with HDR contributing significantly to the bright areas and very good shadow detail in dark areas.
On my Sony 665ES projector, when watching UHD blu-ray with HDR and WCG, I make certain that HDR on the 665ES is set to Auto (I leave it there always) and all color and other settings on my 665ES are at their default levels that I use for all viewing all content. Thus on the 665ES the brightness is set at 50 and the contrast is set at 90, and no color correction is applied in the Sony 665ES menus.
This afternoon, I will check out the exact brightness, contrast, and color settings that I have made on my Panasonic UB900, and report them if they differ from what I have recalled from memory above.
Tom
P.S. I have now had time to review and write down my settings for using the Panasonic UB900 with my Sony 665ES. Here is what I did and what I observed. I put The Revenant UHD into the Panasonic player and switched to Set 1 in the Video Settings. Under Luminance/Color I had changed only two settings, I Contrast set to +7 and Brightness to +10. In the Menus for the 665ES I swtiched Color Space to Bt. 2020. I then watched about 15 minutes of the opening of The Revenant. Colors, especially flesh tones, looked excellent. The overall image, while relatively dark compared to other UHD movies, had very good detail in the shadows, and in no way did I feel the APL was too dim. My wife who was also viewing stated "this is a good picture and is not too dark". I then removed the UHD blu-ray and put in the standard blu-ray for this movie. I swtiched the color space on the 665ES to rec. 709 and I switched the Video settings on the Panasonic player to Set 2 which I had previously set up for standard blu-ray movies (Contrast +2 and brightness +3). I watched the same roughly 15 minutes of The Revenant. The onscreen image was slightly brighter than the UHD version, but not significantly so. Highlights such as fire were significantly brighter and had more "punch" on the UHD version. Detail in dark areas and scenes with the standard blu-ray version was comparable to, but not significantly greater, than dark areas and scenes on the UHD blu-ray movie. At one point my wife said" I think I prefer the standard blu-ray", but then a few moments later when the scene changed she said "no I like the UHD better."
Bottom line is that a very nice onscreen image is displayed with even a dark movie like The Revenant on UHD with the Panasonic and 665ES. I did notice that I used higher settings for both Contrast and brightness with the UHD of The Revenant than I use with the UHD of other discs such as The Amazing Spiderman. This did not surpirse me because The Revenant is overall a rather dark movie (both in content and image). My wife's vacillation is an indication that any individual viewer may find relatively little difference between the UHD and the standard blu-ray version of this movie. For me, the clearly added resolution of the UHD along with its wider color gamut and punch added to highlight made for a more enjoyable viewing experience.