Enable 50Hz (50 Hertz) PAL Playback on ATI Cards in Windows Vista Using Registry Hack

[Sollarian]

For those of you who, like me, are frustrated by the woeful omission of a dedicated 50Hz setting when running ATI drivers under Vista, I have some good news, and some bad news.

The good news is that there is one driver, signed by ATI and dated 25.10.2006, which is susceptible to the oft-mentioned-but-hard-to-find 'Gxo50HzTimingSupport' registry hack.

The bad news is that my copy of the driver was vaporised during the upgrade of my system from Vista RC1/2 to Vista RTM, and I cannot seem to trace it back to any of the previously-released ATI packages located at

http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GRAPHICS-BOARD/ATI/

If the driver was distributed through Microsoft's Windows Update service rather than by ATI themselves, this would explain my inability to Google its location. Regrettably, it also renders the chances of recovering it disappointingly slim.

But enough of the doom and gloom: If by chance you are fortunate enough to come across this gold-dust driver (and if you do, please play nice and share it with the community!), or happen to have it installed on your current machine, here are the steps you need to perform in order to enable 50 Hertz playback.

1. Open Registry Editor (please note that altering your computer's registry may produce undesirable results and/or necessitate the reinstallation of your operating system);

2. Drill down to the key marked

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\

3. Locate the two folders marked '0000' and '0001' within this key's sub-keys--they're populated with a long list of entries such as '3D_Refresh_Rate_Overrride_DEF' and '3to2Pulldown_NA';

4. Create new DWORD named 'Gxo50HzTimingSupport' (without the quotes) with a hexidecimal value of 1 in the folder marked '0000'.

5. Exit Registry Editor and reboot to activate 50 Hz support.

[jgriffin]

I use another method with 7.4.

I create a 50hz 1080i and 50hz 576p timing with Powerstrip.
Reboot, and these are the only two available resolutions.
Dunno why it works, but it has done it for me for 3 separate rebuilds.

[juzdownunder]

I noticed that I have this DWORD value already in my registry, with a hex value of 1. I have just installed the 7.9 version of the Catalyst ATI drivers. But how do I enforce 50hz onto Vista Media Centre?

[freddyfinn]

I have found the ASUS Radeon driver is susceptible to the 50Hz registry hack. Once you install the driver and add the Reg hack you can update to the latest ATI driver.

[juzdownunder]

I got my problem sorted, instead of stuffing around with trying to make Windows display at 50hz, I just did it inside Media Centre. My AFL looks perfect now. See here for details:
http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/comm...tml#post164968