Adjusting Plex Media Player streaming quality defaults and per-stream

plex-streaming-quality-settings.md

Setting a default quality in Plex Media Player desktop

The Plex Media Player desktop application's default quality setting is in different places depending on the interface you're using. The Plex Web UI is used as a point-and-click interface, whereas the Plex Media Player TV UI is used as a remote-friendly interface.

Plex Web UI	Plex Media Player TV UI

Want to change quality for a single playback session? Skip down to Troubleshooting.

Plex Web UI Default Quality Settings

0. If you don't know how much bandwidth you have, visit https://fast.com and it'll tell you.

1. Click Settings up in the top-right corner.

2. Click Quality in the left-hand navigation menu.

3. Choose a default quality that's better than the stock configuration of 2 Mbps. For the bandwidth-impaired, keep this number below 80% of your max speed. For everyone else, I suggest 8, 10, or 12 Mbps.

4. Ensure that Play smaller videos at original quality is checked, and then click SAVE CHANGES.

Plex Media Player TV UI Default Quality Settings

0. If you don't know how much bandwidth you have, visit https://fast.com and it'll tell you.

1. Highlight and then select, or click on your user portrait.

2. Open Settings.

3. In settings, open Video, then Remote Quality.

4. In Remote Quality, choose a default quality that's better than the stock configuration of 2 Mbps. For the bandwidth-impaired, keep this number below 80% of your max speed. For everyone else, I suggest 8, 10, or 12 Mbps.

Troubleshooting

Get lots of stops/starts, or buffering a lot? Try lowering the quality. To temporily adjust quality for a single playback session, follow these steps.

Plex Web UI	Plex Media Player TV UI

Plex Web UI Single-Session Quality Adjustment

1. Open the playback Settings for the video you're watching.

2. Click on the current playback quality and choose a new one from the list.

Plex TV UI Single-Session Quality Adjustment

1. Navigate to the onscreen settings icon while your video is playing and click or select it.

2. Select/click Quality from the list of settings, and then choose and quality from the list and select/click on it, then back out of the settings menu.

plextv-1_user-portrait.png

plextv-2_settings.png

plextv-3_video-remote-quality.png

plextv-4_remote-bitrate.png

plexweb-0.jpg

plexweb-1_settings.png

plexweb-2_quality-entry.png

plexweb-3_set-quality.png

troublehsooting-plexweb-1_settings.png

troublehsooting-plexweb-2_quality.png

troubleshooting-plextv-1_configuration.png

troubleshooting-plextv-2_quality.png

plextv-0_overview.png

@ekk88d I'm not sure when I'll have time to make your suggested changes. You're welcome to fork the gist if you like. I would pull back changes (these are just git repos with a very different UI).

@BlaM To answer your question directly, no, there's no way I know of to configure those values. However...

I had the same problem. WiFi speed wasn't good enough and built-in ethernet was too slow, so I bought a USB3 NIC and get great performance now. I bought this model and used a USB3 hub too since I added storage to my TV. It's a Sony Bravia with Android TV, and compatible NICs are the ones with ChromeOS support.

@RulerOf Thanks, that's the same scenario for me. I wouldn't have an opportunity to fork and maintain.

Time to maintain will remain an unknown, depending on any screenshots that need to get redone because Plex decides to make UI changes.

Just recently, I noticed that the whole search functionality was changed for Plex Web. If I have any enlightenments about new Plex user onboarding, I'll post back.

@RulerOf That's actually an interesting idea. I'm using a Philips TV also running with Android TV. The NIC you used seems to be unavailable here in Germany, but that hint with ChromeOS should be enough for me to find something. Thank You! 😃