I saw a feature request somewhat similar to this but it was ultimately too convoluted, disorganized, and old to bother "liking," so here it is in a more streamlined post that covers the different applications and reasons to implement.
Proposal: When sharing a section with another user via myPlex, you (the server owner) should be able to set a hard limit on their remote speed/remote quality coming from your server.
Reasoning: The fact that the quality/speed of a shared section is currently controlled by the subscriber's client (who may not own the actual server, or the connection it is using) seems backwards. In an ideal world, you would be able to cap individual "subscribers" at different bandwidth limits from the server side. In a semi-ideal world you'd at least be able to set a cap that applies to all subscribers.
For example, if I have a 10mbps upstream bandwidth, and three shared users, I should be able to limit them all to 3mbps and preserve enough bandwidth for everyone to be happy, and for me to carry on using my connection as I see fit. The subscribers would then be able to choose only those qualities up to and including the "cap" of 3mbps I have set. As it is right now, one subscriber is able to max out a residential connection, prevent others from watching the shared content, and prevent the owner of the connection from using their connection normally.
This would involve some significant modification of PMS and Plex/HT (in that the quality settings in Plex/HT would have to grey out for qualities above the cap), but I cannot imagine it any other way—to the extent that when I discovered that subscribers do not have to obey limits placed server-side, I was shocked. I have to imagine very few people have the upstream bandwidth to support subscribers choosing whatever speed they want, and even if we all did, there should be an option to limit it based on other considerations.
I use subsonic for this because plex cannot limit on the server side, and some people just can be trusted to keep their bandwidth at a reasonable level if they have control over it
This would involve some significant modification of PMS and Plex/HT (in that the quality settings in Plex/HT would have to grey out for qualities above the cap), but I cannot imagine it any other way—to the extent that when I discovered that subscribers do not have to obey limits placed server-side, I was shocked. I have to imagine very few people have the upstream bandwidth to support subscribers choosing whatever speed they want, and even if we all did, there should be an option to limit it based on other considerations.
Anyone else think this ought to happen?
I agree on most if not all levels. There is a catch though, and a big one for some. If we want to limit bandwith utilization/quality to users that run clients which support direct play, that means transcoding the media on the server end. So we the server owners are going to have to chose between high bandwidth or high CPU utilization - or both.
But I support this idea fully. I was using Subsonic for media sharing for quite some time until recently when 'Now Playing' was implemented, and I switched all my users over to Plex. After the switch I´m seeing a much higher usage of my uplink bandwidth, since some users are clearly chosing 1080p resolutions.
I would also personally love to see some kind of quota system, so I could either limit the total bandwidth each user can use per day/week/month, or simply just limit the number files that can be played each day/week/month, the latter one probably quite simpler to implement.
I use subsonic for this because plex cannot limit on the server side, and some people just can be trusted to keep their bandwidth at a reasonable level if they have control over it
I'd boot them off of your server if they are not respecting how you want it used.
I'm very new to Plex so correct me if I'm wrong but on the PMS under Settings -> Plex/Web -> Player, there is a Remote Quality drop down list. Does that not limit the end users bandwidth/quality?
I'm very new to Plex so correct me if I'm wrong but on the PMS under Settings -> Plex/Web -> Player, there is a Remote Quality drop down list. Does that not limit the end users quality?
nope, that controls the quality to that instance of the Plex/Web client
Checking back in— glad to see that others are interested!
AntiTrust: I agree, it's a trade off. Personally, I have a beefy Ubuntu setup that is not likely to be phased by a few transcode streams. I find my bottleneck is almost always network bandwidth. That said, if the media can direct play at a lower bandwidth than the set limit, it shouldn't transcode, and you should be able to avoid some over-transcoding that would otherwise tax your system.
Trudge: I would say in my case that the users are simply too tech-illiterate to know where they have set things etc. and ultimately, they cannot be *relied upon* (slightly different than trusted), to manage their bandwidth. Telling them to not stream over a certain limit is easy enough (even when it requires walking them through the settings to get it set properly), but what's even easier is having control server-side so that all guessing and need for instructions is put aside. In addition, this request ties into a previous "bug" post I made where a user was unable to even set their bandwidth limits due to issues with how Plex/HT and PMS were communicating—presumably, implementing this would involve fixing that bug. I just followed up to your comment in that thread clarifying what I meant. But in brief: It is an actual bug—not a misunderstanding of the way things work. Plex/HT, when you're logged in as a "shared to" user, does not receive the basic information necessary for it to know the server it's connected to *can* transcode—which means you can't even choose to transcode at all. The pop-up menu for those settings is completely blank because it doesn't think the server can transcode at all.
As a reminder to everyone who finds this: we could get into a whole load of other related feature requests (for example youtube-like buffering) but I figured this was a good starting point, that in comparison to some of the other requests, seems more feasible on the implementation side. So, if we can keep discussion on topic (limiting bandwidth—though I suppose quotas aren't far fetched either) I think we have a better chance of advocating for this feature.
My anemic 1Mbit upload screams for it! And the foreseeable future won't get much better, here in Italy upload speeds will still be on the 10Mbit max range for years it seems... (best luck we'll get 50Mbit/12Mbit VDSL by Telecom by Christmas, and that's wishful thinking).
where how ?, do not see this in the voting thread, sorry but new here.
If you want to vote for a Feature Proposal, the method to do it here on the Plex forums is to click "Like" in the bottom Right of the Original Post in the thread that suggested the new Feature. ;)
I would like this too. But my needs requires a "min-limit" rather than a "max-limit" on the quality selector.
My upload speed is good enough to support multiple 720p direct streams at once, and with the 30% cache setting in PHT people can pause and wait abit if it buffers. (This would be great for the rest of the clients to)
I have all my media in both SD and HD quality. That way the subscriber can choose SD when they have bad download speeds, or HD when they are on a good one.
However sometimes people are abit stupid and rather than playing the SD content when HD content buffers, they set down the quality in settings, and play the HD content. Making the server transcode the HD content rather than them just playing the SD content.
Or if they log on PlexWeb on a computer they havent been on before, and forget to increase the quality in settings. (As it defaults to 1.5Mbps i think for remote server).
So if I could force the quality setting to be max all the time, forcing users to choose the SD or the HD file instead. Then my server would be happy requiring no transcoding. (Save that for indexing and the plex/web/iOS clients).
+1 for me also. Want to be able to share with family and friends. I love the (have not yet tried it) way you should be able to watch a movie/episode and start it at the same place as a friend/family... :)
+1 from me. I'd very much like to be able to set either a global remote quality cap (say 3mb profile), or even better, an individual per user cap. Also, I agree with the ability to set a per user concurrent login cap.
