Please help***video quality sucks!!!

[lisha000]

Yesterday, I went to watch a movie on my computer that was defaulted to run under Windows Media Player Classic. When it started, it was whited out. So I opened it with regular Windows Media Player, and it was darkened. And both players were "fuzzy", not sharp quality at all, and they were before. So I tried watching it with VLC and it was dark and "fuzzy" as well. Just as a check, I tried watching a video online and it worked fine. I double checked my video drivers and they are up-to-date. I also uninstalled and reinstalled them to make sure, and still the same problem. All the media players on my computer seem to be having malfunctions, all at once and I have no idea why. My power braker did trip when I had a space heater plugged in, and my computer restarted, not sure if that could have something to do with it. But the computer is fine, just the media players all suck all of a sudden?

Any help would be appreciated!!! PLEASE AND THANK YOU!!!

[Selur]

Hard to say with the amount of information you provided.
Did you try another file to know if it is a general problem or just a problem with that file?
May be some fancy color enhancement feature in the video card settings ran amok?
Might also be an issue with the video overlay/renderer settings.

[lisha000]

I did try a different file, and its all the same. Crappy quality.

[jagabo]

Open a video in two players at the same time. Are both messed up?

[lisha000]

Yes. Still messed up. WMPC is too bright. And WMP and VLC are dark. And the quality is just bad, fuzzy. I tried adjusting the brightness and contrast, but the quality still sucks. It looks like a bad version of a downloaded movie. And none of my movies looked like that before.

[Selur]

try mpc-hc and check if changing Options->Playback->Output->Direct Show Video to different values (apply and restart after each change) helps.

[jagabo]

In VLC, try setting the output device to Windows GDI.

[lisha000]

Selur...THANK YOU!!! Followed your instruction and got it back to normal. And once I changed it in MPC...WMP and VLC are fixed as well. I definitely learned something new and am so glad that it was such an easy fix. Thank you again!!!