So, I share my Plex to many people including friends of parents that I don’t personally talk to, I tend to find that some of them, even with Smart TV’s are streaming in 720p and transcoding. Becuase many of them i dont personally chat to and its very difficult to say, “Can you watch in original please”, i would find it much easier to be able to forcibly change the quality of the stream. This is mainly because im running a Dell PowerEdge 2950 III with 2 older DDR2 platform Xeons and I find once I have about 2 people transcoding the server starts to lag quite a bit and starts to affect other users streaming. Has anyone else ever wondered about this feature? I would love to see it implemented into Plex (if possible)
Will there ever be a way to remotely force client devices to use DirectPlay/Stream or select quality
A Xeon X5680 shows a single-thread Passmark of 1455 so even one on-the-fly 1080p transcoding by PMS wouldn’t seem possible. The single-thread Passmark of the E5430 is even worse at 1143.
See support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-
You might consider trying the Plex “Optimize” function to create versions necessary to permit DirectPlay/DirectStream by your clients.
@dduke2104 said:
A Xeon X5680 shows a single-thread Passmark of 1455 so even one on-the-fly 1080p transcoding by PMS wouldn’t seem possible. The single-thread Passmark of the E5430 is even worse at 1143.See support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-
You might consider trying the Plex “Optimize” function to create versions necessary to permit DirectPlay/DirectStream by your clients.
Ill be honest the E5430 is coping pretty well, its been running plex for over a year and we have had no real trouble upto this point, its now just because i am starting to add 4K content to the server and for some reason, people with 4k smart tv’s are streaming it in 720p which is causing the server issues, ive had over 6 1080p Direct Play streams and 2 1080p transcodes at one time and it copes really well.
One of the problematic clients is using a Samsung UE50KU6000 and is for some reason transcoding 4k content to 720p, which is why i wish i could forceibly change the streaming quality to original to then use direct play at least on the video track. Transcoding the audio is no problem for the server.
PMS is best at transcoding when it doesn’t have to do it.
Since PMS lacks any hardware decode capability, transcoding 4K/HEVC on-the-fly is not really possible by your average Intel processor; either desktop or server. PMS on my dual-octocore, hyperthreaded workstation can manage one on-the-fly 4K/HEVC transcode.
Use PMS’ “Optimze” function to create lower-resolution versions of your 4K content that your non-4K clients can then DirectPlay or DirectStream. Either than or become familiar with the likes of HandBrake.
Then you just have to educate your users about how to pick the appropriate version that hopefully avoids transcoding.
and the bandwidth requirements (leaving your network out to the remote user) for a direct play of a 4K video would be?
Depends on the bitrate set in the source material. And if you choose to use PMS’ Optimize, HandBrake or some other transcoding tool then you can pick what you want it to be within certain limits.
There are some PMS settings for transcoding and bandwidth. See support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/227715247-Server-Settings-Bandwidth-and-Transcoding-Limits
Kind of what I was leading towards… that the bandwidth requirements for a 4K are probably greater than the remote access bandwidth cap, thus causing/forcing transcoding.
I personally dont have a remote access cap on, its set to unlimited just because i dont usually have very many people streaming (3 at a push) so im not worried about the cap
@dduke2104 said:
PMS is best at transcoding when it doesn’t have to do it.
Finally someone here who thinks like I do 
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Client apps also have settings for local and remote bandwidth values. You will want to check those too.
