I remember there being a discussion around plex players/plex server getting the ability to figure out what a players abilities were, and then streaming the correct version (i.e, if someone was on a phone, it wouldn’t stream 4k). This was in regards to people keeing 1080p/4k content in the same folder, and letting plex figure it out. I recall that while there was some progress, it wasn’t perfect, but this was at least 6-12 month ago ( I can’t find the original thread).
So I’m wondering, with 1.19.3, is plex 100% smart enough to not stream 4k or HDR content to players that can’t handle it? having two separate folders is kind of a pain, would be easier to maintain if I could just combine everything, and not play HDR/4k on players that didn’t support it.
Funny enough, in terms of devices that can play 4K HDR, phones are increasingly making it into that list.
What this boils down to is the client asking the server the correct question. If the client demands to play the 4k version and a low bandwidth that’ll require transcoding, then that’s what the server will do. If the client request to play any version and specifies a bandwidth limit of X, and there is one that fits that requirement, then it’ll get the highest quality version that is at or below that limit.
I cannot personally answer to what the clients do in the exact scenarios but I believe they are doing the right thing (asking the correct questions of the server) in this situation.
