+1 for that, need
Jesus, I would spend all 5 of my votes on this if I could. The solution is sooo simple, but it looks like we’re gonna have to wait another two years for an over-engineered solution that doesn’t do what we want it to anyway. Here’s a recap of the solution that is most common sense and has probably been suggested ad nauseam in this thread.
Solution:
- Allow server admins to set a default value for Internet and a different one for Cellular (Original, 20 mbps, 8 mbps, 4 mbps, whatever)
- ALL clients will now default to Server Default.
- If the user is experiencing issues, they can change this quality as usual per client as this will override Server Default.
Why it works?
- Gives server owners control over dumb/lazy users who don’t know how to change settings
- I know my users who are streaming from my server better than you do, Plex. Chances are I also know their setups and capabilities better than they themselves do. I also know my own hardware and internet limitations.
- For users who DO know what they’re doing, they can still change the quality as they see fit.
Ideal
Yes, ideally I’d be able to have fine control with conditionals. Like if <5 users streaming, then default to Original, if >5 <10, then default to 8 mbps. If >20 users streaming, then default to 2 mbps.
Yes, ideally Plex would implement an automated speed test that would actually work, or an Auto adjustment that could actually land on Original. Or even a way for the stream quality to change on the fly depending on speed.
But that’s not happening in my lifetime, so I’m hoping a one-line server side change is something more doable.
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Unless you’re planning on having a very short life, I think you may want to rethink some of those statements 
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I would rather that all clients would default to automatically adjusting quality. I don’t understand why that option defaults to off.
Auto quality forces a transcode. The image quality would be better if that were the case, but ultimately the implementation is broken and wouldn’t solve the root problem.
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Is it broken such that the automatic adjustment does not adjust to direct play if that is possible with the connection?
Yep, that is exactly what I am saying. Otherwise all Plex would have to do is make auto quality the default and everything would be fixed.
The server can have Gigabit symmetrical and the client could have Gigabit as well. Ultimately auto quality would still force a transcode. 
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Since I do have gigabit fiber to the home, that truly sucks.
@DaveBinM Are there any plans to fix auto quality?
The work we’re doing here will most likely lead to it replacing auto-quality in future (this is a first step).
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I look forward to the improvements.
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Me too! 
Hi @DaveBinM
Thank you very much. I’m glad that at least a few team members here in between times news through, what happens so and respond to the users.
I would like to see that more often, unfortunately most are very closed.
I think the frustration of many server admins is justified, I have also been terribly annoyed, because much is simply not thought through in my eyes when it comes to setting a server with friends.
Just a few examples:
I can not release multiple slots per user, but only all, who came up with such an idea? That is simply illogical, because it needs something like that only for families and just these would then buy a Plex pass from you so that you could make several home accounts, is limited to it. Would even bring you money. But no now everyone has to make his own account for a family I have up to 5 individual accounts and these must now log in each time when you exchange the devices among themselves, so you have your playlists, etc… For me simply not logical and especially very cumbersome. I hope this will be corrected when revising such settings as discussed here also with.
The same with disabling video transcoding. Why can’t this be done at the category level? Why only for the whole server? I only want to disable 4K because that kills the server quickly. But everything else is no problem. Now I had to create a separate server because of 5 users who want to use 4K to disable it there. But then there is of course the problem that it does not take over the movies and series as seen on the 1080p entries. It’s just not a practical solution. You have to think from the point of view of a server admin. This seems to be definitely not the case with you currently, since much was not logically thought through and although I have no idea of programming, that can not possibly make a big difference whether the hook per category or per server can / must be set, since the command for the server does not change, it is a pure may I or may I not question, which can be answered with yes / no or 0/1 to stay in your world :-).
That you finally bring something new here because of the settings is very good. This is also actually due for years. Actually, the auto function would be good only that was never well incorporated from my point of view, because there is a lot of jumping back and forth although that would not be necessary at all. Causes only a lot of transcoding for nothing. That you now finally act against it is certainly a right step. Please just build the other long desired and supported by many functions with. Then you can finally look forward to something new as a server admin.
It would also be nice if you could build in a bigger buffer. With most devices like cell phones, pads, PC, MAC etc. this should never be a problem anyway. Devices like PS4/5, Nvidia Shield or even TVs could easily be expanded with USB sticks or HDD’s so that even people who don’t have a fiber optic line can enjoy 4K Remux. Most of the time not much is missing. If it only buffers every 15-20 seconds for 1-2 seconds, there is effectively not much missing. But there is also nothing for years, with no player, although there would certainly be opportunities to schedule something like that.
With the last innovations such as Arcade or PlexAmp have probably the fewest server admins really do something. Of course there is a target group for everything and you can do it as you like. But a lot of desired features would be so easy to implement, because they are often just refinements of already existing functions. Why you don’t react faster and do something is a mystery to me. You could gain so many users and what is currently if one reads so through the forum the case, not lose. Because as many as in recent months have changed to the competition, you could have kept with little effort in some cases.
In this sense, I hope that here really what will come very good and you also improve other little things. As you can see from my list, there are some smaller things that can be implemented quickly, since they only affect the server and not the clients. So you would make several 1000 people happy after the many requests here in the forum.
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We are getting awfully close to that year! Hopefully something comes along soon.
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$5 says world war 3 will be started before they fix this.
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That’s the spirit!
I was reading all of your posts since 2019 and, oh boy was it a fun ride. I actually laughed at the initial post being basically “More options for admins” and the final solution after years returned as “Less options to avoid misconfiguration”.
Yea, that was my favorite part.
Let’s see what you got in stock for the future. I’ll add myself to the vote, we need this badly. It’s been too long now.
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I understand that development always seems easier from the outside looking in and that minor changes can create compounding issues, I’ve been there, but outside of Plex being either built with the absolute worst source ever or the development team being completely incapable, there is absolutely zero reason for this to take this long.
Seriously. A year ago, the “it’s more complicated than it seems” still kind of worked. Now? It’s clearly just not a priority. To them it’s fine for the average user, we’re a minority requesting it, and it’s just not important.
You really think that if this was something they genuinely cared about we’d still be posting in this thread? Is a Plex employee really going to come here and tell me it requires MULTIPLE YEARS of development for this change? I totally understand the potential issues of changing something like this, but at this point it’s outright exaggeration to say it couldn’t have been done by now. I feel like my intelligence is being insulted every time I see a “it’s more complicated than you think, I swear!” reply. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like when some dipshit is telling you something is easy to do when you’re the one working with the code, but at this point and with this much time passing I cannot think of a single rational argument that would validate any claims that that is still the case. If it’s really a two year project for your team I would be happy to submit my and a few friends resumes so we can work twice a week and do things faster.
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If you come to think about it, the answer for “why it takes so long ?” is dead simple: priorities.
While I understand that this feature isn’t the only layer of work on their shoulders, Plex is well known since the past few years for a company not close to their customer base. And really, they built up this reputation themselves.
To this day, it’s still really difficult to establish a listened feedback with Plex nor to have a transparent communication with them. They could share with us their priorities, which features we will get and which we won’t, have status and updates in their developments etc… But they simply won’t do that because if we had clear insights on their priorities, we would be upset about what Plex is really building: An All-in-one streaming platform for curated medias.
When you think about “minors features” which won’t require a major UI implementation, you have these for example:
- Alias instead of Plex.TV Usernames (Created in 2014)
- Multiples Cuts of Movies (Created in 2012)
- Control Subtitles and Language Audio Track on a per-series basis (Created in 2017)
- Watchlist for all medias instead of curated movies only (Announced in 2020 - 1 Year to port an already implemented feature)
And of course, this thread too but the list could go on for quite some time…
When you mix that up with the rare answers we get such as “We use this product too / we want it too.” or the famous “Coming Soon™ / It’s pretty close to release™”, it really sounds like fake compassion trying to blur things out. Years flies away and people start getting mad because Plex simply moved on and didn’t released the awaited feature.
This is why things won’t move. Features and development time will always go first to curated content instead of personal medias (even if Plex was built for personal medias only), they won’t admit it but it shows anyway. And while you could help on a human ressources standpoint, you can’t help Plex own shifting mentality.
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I could not agree more.
You can also see the shift in tone from users on the forums from a few years back to now, it went from plex being the best thing since sliced bread to people being unhappy and frustrated and just angry.
The lack of communication frustrates me, a lot. Their priorities frustrate me, a lot. The inability to create a bug report frustrates me, a lot. Developing features around what their paying customers want frustrates me, a lot. Plex inserting themselves between server owners and their clients just pisses me off.
It’s death by a thousand cuts.
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There are multiple people from Plex in here interacting, including myself and Elan, and within the last month, I’ve said we’re currently prototyping this. I think I’m being quite open and transparent here. 
We will never give a list of everything we’re working on (not many businesses publicly document all their business and feature plans), and there are a bunch of things we’ve worked on that are exclusive to personal media in the last 12 months, like Skip Intro or HDR tone mapping. The watchlist stuff has been dependent on our new agents, which we’ve been working on over the last 12 months or so, and done public previews and getting feedback before release. I, and other folks, also spend quite a lot of time here helping folks and trying to provide insight. We can’t get to every thread, nor will we ever be able to get to every feature request. But to say we’re not here, not listening, not giving information on things, and only care about Plex provided content is simply untrue and disingenuous.
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