Increase Channel Change Speed in Media Center

One thing about watching live TV in Media Center that I don’t like is how long it takes to change channels. I have a PVR 150 MCE TV tuner card going to a LCD monitor via the video card and it is a lot slower than a normal TV with cable hookup. Some people have claimed that using a different combination of TV tuner cards and DVD decoder software has made all of the difference.

But if you have a PVR 150MCE TV tuner card then you might be able to use this registry hack (via The Green Button) to bypass the encoder and send the TV signal straight to your viewing source. I’m not sure if this works if you are using your monitor connection (like the VGA or DVI) to view the TV signal or if you need to use the TV out connection.

Enable Live Preview , bypass encoder for 0 delay and fast channel change

This will bypass the decoder and result in a 0 sec image delay as well as faster chanel change. Very useful if you plan to hook up your gameconsole.

Note : Live preview won’t work with all driver version, most of the 1,7 version work and some of the 1,6 just. There are to many drivers to list every driver here, so just test it and see if it works.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd] LivePreview"=dword:00000001

(1 for on, 0 for off)

http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/pvr_reg.html#_Enable_Live_Preview

I use an ATI Radeon display card for computer and TV output so I assume that the non encoded signal gets passed directly to the Radeon's TV output when using MCE. I use a PVR-150 for TV input. I can only assume that the registry hack tells the PVR-150 not to encode live TV being passed to devices other than disk. I also have to assume that the 30 minute "pause Live TV buffer" being recorded to disk at the same time is encoded.

I noticed an immediate improvment in the speed of channel changing when I applied this registry "trick", it's almost back to normal.

I will have to try this out and see how it does. Has anyone tried this without using the TV out connection?