I deleted my own comment - it was unnecessary - as ridiculous as this issue is.
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It’s interesting seeing this problem frustrate other people to no end. It’s even more interesting watching Plex completely ignore request from the people that actually run servers. This is how you ruin your companies reputation.
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@elan any updates? 
Default ALL client apps to MAXIMUM QUALITY - LOCAL AND REMOTE. There is absolutely no reason to default them to low quality. Also, let the server admin force the settings for each client. We are sick and tired of explaining things to non technical people over and over again…
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They don’t care. They’re too focused on stuff we don’t want. Free TV/movie services we want to get away from, games that don’t work well, and a music player no one uses because there is spotify
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100% agree with everyone else on here! Plex Admins, I could care less about arcade games and music, what I do care about is not having my plex server’s CPU crushed for absolutely NO REASON! All my users have more than enough bandwidth to stream original quality or at the very least much higher than the current old school low bandwidth setting that is the current default. Please get a fix implemented!
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I would rather deal with the 5% who claim buffer issues due to poor internet and explain how to lower it off maximum, than feel bad that 95% are watching streams at poor quality because they don’t know how to change it and instead think I just have poor quality files. And then you finally get them to change it and a month later after an update or something it’s back down to 2Mbps BS
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Don’t even try @elan.
We tried to get this done for years and years it hasn’t happened and it probably never will because the folks behind it don’t give a ■■■■. At this point the best we can hope for is a bankruptcy and they make it open source. So we actually can do the changes us self. And make Plex great again
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Again they ain’t going to come and do anything no matter how much you tag them. And if one of them do come they coming with the same scripted answer like always. The only helping and decent Plex employee there is. And really do try to help isnt even a full time staff. And is in the wrong area. But @ChuckPa is really the only person at plex who is actually trying to please the people.
Please refrain from pinging multiple employees on this. I don’t have any further updates on this at this time, other than that we’re continuing to work on this, and have been making internal progress, but nothing to share publicly at the moment.
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As I predicted in my previous post. Same scripted answer as you guys have been using for years now. Internal progress? For what? Something it would take a 12yo kid 10 min to implant on any given spaghetti code? That’s some real sad stuff. But hey let’s see how long you can keep this up maybe another 6 more years perhaps?
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Releasing the client apps with said defaults at max is not something that takes ‘a lot of work’. But what does take a lot of work is constantly trying to explain how to change them to numerous family/friends every time they get a new device or app.
This could have been temporarily solved years ago by simple default changes in the apps while something more concrete was developed.
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I gave a bit of an explanation on what we’re working on further up the thread, which goes beyond just setting a new default, if you want to read back. This is not some scripted answer, and the attitude is not really appreciated. I’d remind you to have a read at our forum guidelines.
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Man I have read it and im just not buying it. And I’m not talking about just change the default I’m talking about allowing the server owners to manually sit the default for all users. It’s not hard stuff. An I’m sorry sir if you feel like my attitude isn’t appreciated. But seriously all minor issues/bugs that could be fixed with some cleaver kids to say it straight out. Is being answered with the same scripted answer instead of just dealt with. Like come on man. I can find tons of stuff that should just have been fixed all the way back from 2014/2015 that just hasn’t been dealt with. But this thread right here is probably the biggest at this given time. And I’m just tired of seeing reply after reply that we will deal with it but never anything to show for it. So please sir do something
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I’m doing everything I can, but saying “how hard can it be” and “anyone could do this” is rarely reflective of reality, and we’d rather do this properly than simply swap one default for another and introduce different issues, as I mentioned earlier. As for server owners setting defaults, I already addressed why we wouldn’t do that in a prior post, and would rather give control to end-users to be able to set the quality for themselves on the clients
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And I fully get that I really do. But as you keep addressing it’s taking time. And what I’m trying to say the other thing would simple just be a pleasing thing to do in the mean time. And yeah it will probably cause some other problems we would have to deal with. But I’m really in that believe it would be less then we have to deal with now. And no I don’t think anybody could do what you are trying to do with the bigger structure of this as you trying to tell us you are trying to do. But anybody could make the thing I’m trying to tell you. I would prefer you did in the mean time. While you develop this don’t know what to call it not much info has been given but guess it’s an “algorithm” of some sort that is calculating the speed between host and client to estimate the if it’s directplay or transcode it with a 10mbps stream. But what I really just want to do right now is to tell my users to do some speedtest of their own and I will set their default accordingly. Instead of have to visit them all every few months to set their client probably. Do you get what mean. Do you understand the hassle. And a 2mbps/4mpbs default stream is low and really power consuming. I really just want you to understand where this manor outburst is coming from. And I do know alittle about all this been in this world for 20 years professionaly.
As for giving control to the end users to set the quality themselves would be fine if we all had state of the art servers that can handle all those transcodes but unfortunately most of us do not. So you default settings to allow the end user to unknowingly DDoS our servers.
It’s a big HUGE deal. Not only does it ruin that users experience it also ruins it for everyone else becuase now the server is slammed and then who has to be bothered about it??
“edit”
Right, but making it server side configurable is then just engineering a different solution (which covers fewer scenarios and is not as flexible as what we’re working on at the moment), and is not a small change. I don’t think that a 2Mbps or 4Mbps transcode (if required) is “really power consuming”, but everyone has different views on transcoding 
You’re also not really addressing the source issue of non-ideal client side quality settings. While this may improve things for you, for other users, it would mean they then have to walk people through changing settings, which they don’t at the moment. As stated before, we’d rather have a more complete solution than swap one set of problems for another.
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I don’t think you necessarily need a state of the art server for those. Even a little Intel NUC from 8th gen onwards can happily transcode high bitrate 4K HDR content, and multiple 720p or 1080p transcodes in hardware. Also, please stop editing your posts after I’ve replied and addressed the points in your first reply to add additional things without clarifying that they’re edits.
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And you are probably right I don’t know what you working on. But I don’t exactly know what you mean by “they then have to walk people through changing setting” that’s what I’m trying to avoid by could do it myself so I don’t have to go through that hassle?
And my personal problem source issue with non-ideal settings? Why transcode a perfectly good 1080p movie down to SD by default when they clearly able to pull 100mbps the viewer experience is worse. And again and Ryzen 5900x running 80% because 20 people is transcoding when they can do directplay on my 5gbps internet connection. With the right client settings that I can’t change remotely. Is an issue for me 80% on a 12core 24thread CPU I don’t think you are aware of the power consumption is. And no I don’t use hardware transcode because I don’t like the end result. Plus having a graphic card running too would just make greta thunberg go crazy
EDIT: And this is what you are forcing slot of servers to do. Equal alot of servers is wasting energy they shouldn’t
