I’ve had a Media Center PC for quite some time now and this is the best Media Center Tweak I have ever found. It improves your video quality in some cases ten fold!
I love the new Vista Media Center, by far one of the most amazing pieces of software ever written by Microsoft, however, I was so disappointed at the quality I was getting! I would literally plug in S-Video into my TV, and then into Media Center, and the quality was so terrible!
I had to find a solution! And I’m glad to say I have! All you need to do is edit the Registry and change the DefAvgBitRate value to a much higher value than is currently in the system. By default its set to 20000000. I set it to 80000000 and the quality improvement was astonishing! Even my wife noticed!
Where is this key?
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Media Center/Service/Video/Tuners/DVR
Why does this work so well? Simple. What you are doing here is changing the default bitrate that Media Center will record television shows at. Every time you watch television, you are watching recorded TV.
Enjoy vastly improved video!
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There’s more information on this technique at Baytzim Research http://www.baytzim.com/Research/