My computer sucks at brightness

November 13, 2009 3:30 PM

I have a computer hooked up to my TV (a normal CRT), but any video played from the computer is too dark. Turning up the brightness or contrast settings on the computer just makes the "black" parts of the picture look grey. What setting am I looking for to fix this?

So I'm watching TV on my computer-TV system. Scenes that aren't dark (like outdoor scenes shot during the day) look perfect. But during scenes set at night nearly the entire screen is black, even though the picture is clear when the same video file is played on another computer.

It's almost as if the computer is interpreting every slightly dark part of the picture as "black," so that turning up the brightness just makes it a lighter black but doesn't actually show anything. I think there's probably some setting buried in my graphic or codec settings that affects this, but I've looked and can't find it.

Details: the TV is wired to the computer's video card via the RCA video input. The output on the video card is actually S-Video, so I have a converter in-line. Video from other sources (cable or my DVD player) looks totally normal on the same TV.

posted by hayvac to technology (4 comments total)

This sounds to me like a loss of dynamic range in the signal. The input on the TV is analog, so a loss of signal level means a loss of dynamic range. I would try putting a video signal booster in between the computer and TV.
posted by idiopath at 3:34 PM on November 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is there a GAMMA setting?
try playing with that in addition to brightness and contrast.
posted by Iax at 4:14 PM on November 13, 2009

You want to change the settings on the computer, not the TV. Poke around on the driver settings for the video card and see what you can find for brightness, contrast and maybe "digital vibrance" whatever the hell that means.
posted by pwnguin at 6:02 PM on November 13, 2009

You almost certainly want to adjust the gamma. http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm
posted by Nothing at 9:30 PM on November 13, 2009