No ability to disable transcoding for web player

I'm curious why this is. I'd love to be able to watch via the web player on devices that arent compatible with the app. I wish I weren't forced to transcode. I turn it up to 10 Mbps figuring it'll have to do less work, but it'll take 2 Mbps and transcode it up to 10...LOL not optimal.

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Our transcoder doesn't transcode UP. And it doesn't transcode if it doesn't have to.

If you set the quality to 10Mbps, and the bitrate of the video is less than that, it will just remux the video to a format the browser can play back. Browsers have limited format support. It will transcode MPEG1 to h.264 no matter what, but if you're playing back live tv or a recording from TVE, it will likely just remux the video.

You can see the status under the video player on what it's doing.

You can use the Play with VLC integration on Windows (not sure if it works on a Mac).
Also iPad app on a Mac and Android app on Windows.

The Echo Show 8 doesnt have VLC either.

Should the same thing apply for the iOS player? For example, if I set the video format to 8Mbps, and the original bitrate of the show (480i MPEG-2 from HDHR recording of an SD channel) is 2Mbps or so, I'm seeing the statistics show the bitrate as about 8Mbps, and the video as H.264 instead of MPEG-2?

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Either you're wrong, or the bitrate shown by Stats is wrong. The Stats always shows whatever the transcode rate is set to (fluctuating up and down slightly as the video plays, but always averaging whatever the transcoder is set to).

When using anything but Original Quality, the stream will be HLS which means it will be transcoded to h.264 to the correct bitrate, so for MPEG1, yes it will be. for h.264, it will only transcode if the original bitrate is above your quality setting, otherwise it will just remux.

You can learn more here:

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