I wrote a big long post but have decided to condense.
Movies are stored on external hard drive connected to an amd fx-8320-e 3200 MHZ processor with 8 gig of ram computer.
All been converted to H264.mkv at nearly the highest settings.
My internet upload speed is in the 1mps range
Watching on my iphone the image looks like a 240 kind of thing I looked at the settings and feel like I have them where it should look better but wonder if I just do not have enough computer for how I have the movies converted.
Do you get that experience when you access your movie from outside your home network?
In that case the culprit is most likely your limited upload…
With a max. upload speed of 1 Mbps, Plex will probably work with an average bitrate of 700 kbps and therefore downscale the video both in size as well as in quality.
For comparison… the max bitrate of a 1080p file streamed from iTunes will be approx. 8 Mbps; if I remember correctly, Netflix 1080p videos streamed in a similar range (7.5 Mbps)
Yes that is likely it. Not sure why the upload would not be better as we asked for the best we could get internet wise but I will look into it.
Thanks for the reply
Most ISP’s have stuck with the mantra that 99.9% of their user base consumes rather than contributes. So they give you massive download speeds and low upload speeds. Usually this is enough for most people to do their basic uploading like sending emails, uploading photos to facebook, etc. It’s very likely that you did ask for the best you could get, but your ISP is still stuck in that old mantra. Thankfully, Google Fiber came here to where I live and it forced the industries hand, so lots of providers are offering larger upload plans than they would otherwise, and also offering Gigabit internet. Hopefully that at least explains why you might have a limited upload speed, and it’s unlikely to change without the customer base complaining repeatedly.
1Mbps is barely enough for standard definition video. That is most likely why it looks like you are watching movies filmed with a potato camera.
If viewing your library away from your house is something you want to do more often you will want to contact your internet provider and look at plans that offer more upload. Unfortunately most ISP’s hide, or obfuscate their upload speeds on separate pages from what they list the download speed as. Comcast does it on almost all of their packages.
I have the Extreme 300 package which is no longer offered in most area’s. It offers me 300mbps download speed, which I really don’t need. But the reason I use it is because of the 25mbps upload speed which makes Plex usage much better. Unfortunately its a monopoly in my area, while I can get other providers, their offerings are extremely poor.
The FX-8320 is getting a bit old, but should be capable of about 2 1080p streams as long as the server isn’t overloaded with other non-plex tasks.
If your movies are stored on a computer, you’re internet speed is irrelevant, as you’re passing data through your own internal network. Are you sure you’ve installed PLEX SERVER and not PLEX PLAYER? Second, You don’t need to convert anything with PLEX, that’s what the transcoding is for. Converting an already concerted file actually reduces quality (just so that you know).
