Adaptive transcoding bypass system

The subject system allows a source device providing a content stream over a network connection to a sink device to adaptively bypass a transcoding portion of a content processing pipeline when the original content stream, e.g. the non-transcoded content stream, can be decoded by the sink device and/or when no actions that utilize transcoding have been requested for the content stream. The source device may power down the transcoding portion of the content processing pipeline when the transcoding portion is not in use. When an action that utilizes transcoding is requested, and the transcoding portion of the pipeline is being bypassed, the source device may power on the transcoding portion and adaptively modify the pipeline to pass the content stream through the transcoding portion. The source device may provide configuration messages to the sink device when the pipeline is modified to provide information for decoding the transcoded content stream.