New
#1
Awful video quality on Windows 7 x64 bit systems
I recently upgraded from Vista 32 to Windows 7 x64 on my HTPC. I had been watching videos of various file types such as xvid and matroska, and have been impressed with the quality of these compressed formats. After upgrading I found that the video quality had degraded dramatically. All video files now have a murky, high contrast appearance, sometimes with odd color shifting. Some videos with even lighting are still bearable, but most are awful and unwatchable. I assumed the problem must be with codecs or a problem with Windows Media Player, but the problem occurs regardless of the many different codecs and players I have tried, such as VLC or MPC. I then tried using different old and new video drivers and found no help there either. I finally tried playing the videos on a different computer I use for CAD work and, to my surprise, had the same problem. This baffles me because these are completly different computers, with different video cards, drivers, etc. The only thing they have in common is Windows 7 x64. Clearly there has to be a problem with Win 7 that is screwing up video, but its hard to imagine what that could be since the problem is not just with Media Player. But more to the point, if this is occuring on my completely different computers then it must be occuring on every Windows 7 computer playing video. Thats a lot of computers. What is causing the bad video and why aren't countless users complaining?