I have a Sony DCR-TRV480 Digital8 camcorder I picked up to digitize a bunch of old Hi8 tapes. I'm using Firewire, both to a Hackintosh (Syba PCIe card) and an old Core 2 Duo MacBook. I've also hooked the camera's S-Video output directly to a Sony KDL-40V2500 LCD TV. The problem I'm seeing ... The Firewire and S-Video output are really poor. Muddy darks and washed out colors. However, the camcorder's little LCD monitor shows a great picture - expected color, and detail in darker areas that are totally lost with S-Video/Firewire.

What, if anything, am I doing wrong? Is there any way to get output from the camera that comes close to what the LCD display shows?

I'm kind of a neophyte at this stuff (I used to know my way around MJPEG boards etc almost twenty years ago, but ...).

TIA!