A source device in a wireless display system determines whether a scene change has occurred between a first picture and a second picture prior to transmitting an encoded representation of the second picture to a sink device. The scene change occurs when the first picture and the second picture are sufficiently dissimilar. The source device may reduce, in response to determining that the scene change has occurred, a number of coding bits in the encoded representation of the second picture. Furthermore, in response to determining that the scene change has occurred, the source device increases a throughput of a wireless channel. After reducing the number of coding bits in the encoded representation of the second picture and increasing the throughput of the wireless channel, the source device transmits the encoded representation of the second picture to the sink device via the wireless channel.