It does, but if the client quality is set to default 720p, and your entire library is 4K/1080p, then it’s another hurdle you have to get to for DirectPlay to happen… and since it’s client based and not server based, it means every single person you invite has to be given a list of settings tweak to mitigate transcoding… Instead, it really should start off at “Original”/“Maximum” and then users individually can tweak from there…
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Oh I agree that the default should be better, or that perhaps a setup wizard should ask the user what to set for the quality limits.
At a minimum ‘automatically’ adjust should be the default.
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Hi,
I’ve opened a feature request for that
please vote 
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trust me, i’m sure it’s something like 60+% server owners who have thi issue. they just aren’t saying anything.
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Any headwind on this? Gig up/down here, would much rather use bandwidth than constantly see streams transcode.
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I would also like to see this change. We have been asking for this for years, please considering implementing it Plex team.
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I troubleshot a single client issue down to this. One person on my server was having issue streaming no matter what. Once I had him change quality to “Original” he’s never had an issue again. His TV could easily handle direct stream, but it was transcoding it down to 720p.
Digging further, I found the majority of my clients end up transcoding because of this. Going to be a mess getting some of the non tech savvy people setup… Unsure why the default is an arbitrary 720p. 1080p is much more common these days.
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Ridiculous that this isn’t a default feature. Emby allows automatic quality control on the client level.
This is a subject proposed since 2017. At the very least, 720p @4mbs should NOT be the default. Bump it to 1080p @8mbps.
It’s either laziness, or a direct response to avoid a sort of legal gray area with sharing high quality media to clients. I’m hoping it’s just laziness.
Do better Plex.
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someone up in management is stubborn and wouldn’t like to change that settings. so instead of them giving the option to the server to set their preferred remote quality they put that useless option on the client side.
if the problem is upload limits then why clients that download dictates our upload speed limits?
Well they cant even seem to make it play in any quality for many now - but i still wote for getting this! - let the server owner set a minimum or ppl just cant connect 
Im so tired of this. I change remote speed to “original/maximum” and when someone start playing it use 2 Mbit.
But the worst is all the ■■■■ plex adds, instead of work on the server/client for better experience they put in free movies (that i cant use because subtitle is missing), Tidal (why? This is a movie/serie player/server).
Update all client (apps, webstream) to maximum as default. Do it quick and listen to your customers. Emby picks more and more plexuser.
Thanks!
From what I understand, subtitles are coming? But I could be mistaken.
Correction, it’s a MEDIA server, and music is Media. I don’t subscribe to Tidal due to other reasons (mainly not wanting to support Jay-Z, I think he’s a hack). But I’d be ultra satisfied if they linked to other Music sources in the future, I do subscribe to some of the others, until then, I will just keep my own FLAC library. I can say, that’s the one area that Tidal does accel, it keeps MASTER Audio tracks, I do wish some of the others would follow suit.
Meh, I think it goes pretty evenly both ways honestly, and Plex is doing things completely unique, making itself a sustainable business.
Ugh, this is such an annoyance. It costs us more money to transcode things down needlessly like this. I constantly see people transcoding media down to 2 Mpbs even though we all have 1000/1000 fiber over here.
If you’re forcing transcoding anyways, why not at least have Plex default to automatic? At least then it could start at 2 Mpbs and then go to higher quality and not look terrible.
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Just found this thread after getting the same issue as everyone else, beyond frustrated that nothing has been done about it for years…
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The beta release of PMS now has disabled video transcoding - so thats interesting
Unsure of how it works as when i enable it the video just never starts instead of forcing the client to accept non transcoded media
Edit: So its really odd - when you enable it the status on the server says its transcoding but nothing ever starts on my device - Hardware transcoding seems to become disabled and instead the cpu gets hit with a transcode that doesn’t get sent to the device
Plex needs to fix this ASAP…this is craziness that this cannot be set. How are they just ignoring their users like this.
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i’m glad you guys implemented disabling transcoding but now people are getting *not powerful enough* messages sometimes.
also this should be an option to disable but another option that allows you to give certain users permission to transcode.
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I would be happy, if we could set the default quality on a per user basis. I use Plex for family, that is not very tech savvy and they all stream in the default quality (which is garbage) and won’t listen to me, when I tell them to manually increase it.
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if i worked at plex, this would be a perfectly reasonable request and it makes sense.
You are a User, you think like a User, you want things that Users want.
You could never work at Plex.
You don’t have ‘The Right Stuff’.
