There is actually an argument to be made for trying to deliver high quality content at the lowest acceptable bitrates. First, most people won't know the differe

There is actually an argument to be made for trying to deliver high quality content at the lowest acceptable bitrates. First, most people won't know the difference (ie: my parents), and second it seems like high speed internet is still the exception in many places. In my old apartment, if I were to try to stream something 10mbit, I'd be hurting anything else trying to use my internet connection. I spent about a year trying to get office staff to work with the ISP they had an exclusive agreement with, and the end result was apartment staff didn't want to put in the effort and expense to upgrade the building. When I moved out, I made sure to move to a house with access to gigabit internet, and it was amazingly difficult to get. I don't live in a podunk town. I live in a major metropolitan area. Poor quality was one of the reasons I, myself, opted to buy and rip. I paid for the lifetime Plex long ago and used that until Plex got too annoying and started requiring internet to function. I still keep a Jellyfin service up for content that I want but can't get streaming.