I’m pretty sure your rant won’t do anything. People have been ranting here for years. Curious though, I thought the default now is maximum for remote quality? That’s ehat I’ve been getting when new Plex clients are installed in smart TV’s and Nvidia Shields.
They removed my post in like 6 hours.
So I think we know where Plex stands on this. I’ve been a Plex Pass customer for just shy of a decade at this point. Now, knowing how much of an ANTI-PRIORITY this is for Plex, I now begin looking to spend my money on their competitors, because this is a pretty ridiculous hill for them to die on.
I suspect it was removed because your rant was confusing.
The default hasn’t been 720 for a long time.
Plex has been working on this for a while. It isn’t perfect but a lot better.
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It doesn’t seem to do it on Fire TV devices neither which is odd considering how popular the Fire TV and Apple TV devices are. Going by the way that people mention those two brands the most in many communities I would assume they are most common plex player clients.
Quality suggestions are supported on Fire TV.
None of the devices connected my server are seeing it. Fire TV Stick (2nd, 3rd and 4K Max) and Fire TV Cube (2nd and 3rd gen). And the feature is still very much Beta as indicated in the PMS options.
Well, all my Fire devices (Stick 4K, Stick Gen3, Stick 4K Max, Stick 4K Gen2, Stick 4K Max Gen2) are having and using this feature.
And what options are you referring to on the PMS, where its claimed Beta? I’m not aware of any serverside options for quality suggestions.
You are obviously an isolated case here. I get it on my FireTV devices too.
Yes, possibly. I think there are some more important issues they need to address first before I ask them to look at logs from my server though so I won’t be raising it as an issue yet
I think you might be referring to “automatically adjust quality”. Quality Suggestions is different, and has never been labelled in app as “beta”. There is also no server-side component. It’s entirely client-side.
Really is unacceptable that this still doesn’t work on TVOS and iOS unless I’m missing something? It’s been years…
Why is this still a thing? NOT transcoding should (obviously) be the default. Most client-users are generally less geeky than us server-running folks. How can we expect them to even think about this, let alone set it the way we, the server owners, would want. Defaulting to not transcoding makes the most sense.
Also, when I invite someone to my library, I would like to be able to restrict some folks from being able to cause MY server to transcode content for them. Give that access to too many people, and suddenly THEY are monopolizing my server unintentionally.
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The only solution is to use Tautulli scripts. I have it set to kill any transcode where the client quality level is set below “original”. I have an exception for mobile LTE/5G connections, as I’m happy for them to request transcode.
The quality suggestions could have been a solution but it doesn’t work. It suggests lowering quality when it absolutely should not. I think it made the situation worse.
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Yes, whenever a new friend asks me why their playback on Plex is lagging, or when I recommend Plex to others, the first thing I need to tell them is to change the default settings. They shouldn’t use the defaults because they can lead to unnecessary transcoding. Please set the default to use original quality/highest quality by default.
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It only offers to downgrade if it has buffered three times, and the connection speed is not fast enough. What’s the alternative when the connection is not fast enough, and it’s buffered three times in a session?
That’s what the Quality Suggestions feature does.
But the Quality Suggestions feature doesn’t achieve this; it still causes a lot of unnecessary transcoding.
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Quality Suggestions defaults to Original/Max Quality, and only suggests a downgrade if the session buffers three times, and the connection speed is not fast enough. It also remembers the quality and speed between sessions, per server. It also doesn’t do anything without user intervention. The end user has to say “yeah, this is buffering a lot, I’d like a lower quality with smooth playback”. It also offers to upgrade quality if the connection speed is fast enough. In tests (among thousands of users), users with Quality Suggestions had statistically significant fewer transcodes and more Direct Plays and Direct Streams than users not using it.
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What I know is that in certain situations, when you turn off Quality Suggestions, it stops transcoding. This is what actually happens.
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