Hi,
I'm pretty much a noob so be gentle.
i'm wondering if its possible to tweak VLC to play streams at a lower quality.
for instance, i'm able to get a m3u playlist of 1080P streams but my internet (and data plan limits) cannot stream 1080P streams. The source is also not adaptive so limiting my internet speed/bandwidth at my end only results in extreme buffering
i'm wondering if there's a way to reduce that quality via VLC to say 480P at my end so that my data consumption reduces and my speeds and data plan can cope.
No, the data rate has to be reduced at the source. You need to find a provider that has low bandwidth channels (there are some).