For a while now, I have been plagued by a rather unusual tech issue. All the media files (movies, trailers, etc) I run on my computer seem to suffer from a lack of color. They aren't completely in black in white, but look 'paler' then normal. The one type of file that doesn't seem bother by this is the quicktime movie. I can run those just fine. One of the solutions I've found is deactivating directdraw and direct3D through turning down the hardware acceleration on the 'problem solving' tab of 'monitor' on the configuration screen. I thought it might be the drivers (I have an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200), but changing those didn't help. Needless to say, I don't fancy keeping that on as a permanent solution, but it'll do for the moment. Any suggestions?

In the Nvidia Control panel you should see a colour overlay tab. Adjust the brightness/contrast/colour settings here and see if you can get a better picture (although it does seem strange how the default settings look so bad for you)? I would have thought that QuickTime used the same overlay settings though so this does seem very bizarre!

Bah, my post was eaten yesterday...

What media player are you using? Try different ones, you mentioned that Quicktime works normally, which makes me think it's a software issue. In Windows Media Player from the tools -> options menu you can try toggling the settings and see if it fixes anything, with Winamp (the other one I personally use) click options -> preferences -> video and toggle the settings, other media players should have similar controls, check them out and see if anything works.

Sounds like an overlay saturation issue to me...for some reason, I seem unable to adjust that setting, though...but I can at least tell you how to get to it.

If you're using classic view of Control Panel, it's under Display, on the Settings tab, click on the advanced button. That should bring up a seperate menu, and you ought to have a tab on that menu called "Overlay."

Try fiddling with those settings, if it will let you.

And, I think, Quicktime uses a different overlay routine. I can't guarantee that...but it IS a much older format than .avi or .mpg or whatever.

There are also "display profiles" or similar in WMP which it might be worth investigating.

Thanks for the advice guys. Now: my display properties are slightly limited, and there is only one profile to choose from. I don't think it's a software problem either, as Realplayer suffers the same fate..