At home we like to watch 4K Movies and TV Shows if they are available and we do this via Direct Play with no transcoding.
We share the PMS with several friends, some of which have either poor bandwidth or devices that will not handle 4K.
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As I cannot transcode 4K, and would not want do, what is the best way to have both resolutions available? Seems a waste of space downloading everything twice but I guess there is no other way. How do I handle this via Sonarr and Radarr too?
Thanks for your reply. This seems like a manual process of downloading the different resolutions and renaming them. While helpful, not what I was really looking for.
I was after something like I want Movie X, I add it to Radarr and request 4K. I want the 1080p version to also download and only make the 1080p version available to those who cannot handle 4K.
Or, make both 1080p and 4K available to all and Plex will pick the right version depending on the client.
Plex clients should automatically request the resolution that they can handle. So if their player is 4K capable, then the server should send that to the client (BANDWIDTH WILLING). If the client is only 1080p, and you have a 1080p version alongside the 4K version, the client SHOULD ask for and receive the 1080p one. I say “should”, because I haven’t experimented with the autoselect option, and I do not know how reliable it is at it. Since a lot of movies are not simply EXACTLY 1080p, I can easily see a situation where a 1079p video is deemed insufficient for a 1080p client, so the server might send out the 4K one (or transcode it down to 1080p.
In case you didn’t know, you can have two copies of a movie, and Plex will detect both and stack them on top of eachother. You do not need to do the “multiple version” bit as linked above, that would allow you to automate setting up completely different entries in your library (such as “director’s edition” re-release of a movie alongside a “regular edition”). Multi-version is a single entry, and is pretty much undetectable unless you know what to look for in the menu and select a specific version to play. On selection, Plex should pick the correct one for the client.
So how do you get say a 1080p and 4K version downloaded, in the same direction I assume? Can this be done automatically with Sonarr/Radarr? Surely you don’t do it manually?
You either use more storage from downloading/creating multiple versions yourself - or get a better server. Cheap Intel based boxes are super easy to use as servers, what’s the issue with just making a proper server?
