When watching live TV, there does not seem to be a way to set the transcoding quality in the client. The server just always tries to send the maximum quality based on the server side upload bandwidth settings. This is a serious bug because while my server has 35mbps, my phone while I am on a cell network obviously does not.
Currently, I work around this by manually setting the upload bandwidth on the server to a lower number when I want to watch on my phone. When I watch on a more beefy connection, I have to login to the web interface and raise the upload bandwidth setting on the server to get it to stream 720p/1080p.
The client for live TV needs to show the same transcoder quality options as other media.
I’ve cranked down the quality settings on my phone, which forces a transcode on the server side. It’s pretty low quality, just bordering on acceptable.
It stinks a bit because I have can set it back to higher settings just fine for movies and shows I already have. There’s some serious inefficiencies happening on the Live TV/DVR stream and file sizes.
Native apps for the HDHomerun seem incredibly more efficient on network vs. what Plex can do as well. I really hope they put some attention into that.
Yeah, I like the idea, but it’s only a small improvement over my current solution.
I think it has to do with the high bitrate mpeg video needing to be decoded and then re-encoded to h264. The machine I have the tuner connected to isn’t super beefy, but it does barely keep up when transcoding to 1080p 12mbps. It doesn’t seem to have as much trouble for transcoding existing media.
In some ways, this is a feature request, but I consider it a bug because being able to select the streaming quality on the client is basically one of the main selling points of Plex (that it can make your media play on any device with basically any reasonable connection).
Guys, I just checked in with the devs on this and I’m told that this feature is coming. No ETA of course but will probably be released on Android clients first.
