Playing a movie last night, and I swear there were @ least 10-15 quality options to choose.
Why so many? What’s the difference between 1080@12 mbps and 1080 @ 12 mbps?
what does maximum mean?
thanks 
The quality settings are designed so that if your network cannot handle the load of transferring your video in real time, you can set the quality lower, so PMS will transcode (convert on the fly) the video and send it out through your network at the lower quality. The values you see are those that are lower than the original quality of the video. If your video has a high bitrate, you will see lots of options, if your video has a low bitrate, you get fewer options. PMS does not upscale do having settings above the original quality just does not make sense.
So, outside of maximum, all the options are “downgrades” to allow for suitable performance based on my particular server/network?
Yes. So if your setting is at 10 Mbps (you can basically ignore the resolution), and your original file is at 12, the file will get downsampled to 10 to match your setting. If you original file is 8 mbps, then nothing happens as the file has not hit the 10 threshold.
Keep in mind, the value is only on the video portion of the file. It does not take into account audio. If the audio needs to be converted, it is usually to 198 kbps stereo). This depends on the audio settings for the app and the device’s ability to play surround sound. So if you have a 12 mpbs video and a 3 mbps audio track, this will get down sampled to either 13 mbps (10 video, + 3 audio) or 10.2 mbps (10 video + 0.2 audio).
Gotcha, thanks!
I feel like there would probably be a better way to indicate that in the onscreen options that the xbox provides…
It’s sort of common to have quality settings when viewing streaming videos. If you’ve never used any type of service then I guess it would be confusing.
and that’s what I’m referring to. … making it easier for grandma.
I get that they are quality settings, (it’s in the quality section) its just hard to understand what they mean, in their context, without explicitly knowing what the source is capable of, and when it lists mbps and people may equate that to network speed - with most homes being at 100 mbps, if not gigabit by now - the settings by themselves just dont make sense.
They could, for instance, change the wording to make a simple interface by saying "reduce buffering :: 1x, 2x, 3x, etc.)
