Unnecessary transcoding for SD channels

[sdust]

Watching remotely and my bw limit is set to 4Mbps for streaming. When watching a 2Mbps SD channel, DVR will transcode this stream to 4Mbps h.264 stream wasting bandwidth and CPU. Can we stop doing that?

[eric]

As previously discussed:

@eric

Because we don't support transcoding to mpeg2 or h.265, we must transcode those formats to be able to provide Adaptive Bitrate streaming — our player cannot seamlessly handle the codec changing on the fly when switching from one bitrate to another.

We have decided that Adaptive Bitrate streaming is much more important for the seamless experience of our customer base vs not transcoding original content. If a user specifically does not want transcoding, they can set the Quality to Original to opt out of transcoding and the Adaptive Bitrate streaming.

[sdust]

I have Adaptive Streaming under Transcoder set to Off. Please do not optimize my experience. How do I opt out?

[eric]

It's not a priority for the majority of our customer base, but the next time I'm in the code around determining what to send I'll try to remember to look at decisions that are made when ABR is disabled.