For referance, I have a
Nvidia FX 540 Quadro from PNY.
Now, looking in device manager I think I found the problem; under Other Devices there is "Multimedia Video Controller" without drivers installed. This is listed in the same PciE slot as my video card. I can't find the drivers for this on the card's installation disk though.
Also, I can't seem to find a differential brightness setting.
Also, whatever window the video is playing in (the fancy looking windows media player one, the VLC player window, or even mozilla) is fine... Just the video itself and not a pixel more.
I believe the brightness setting on my monitor is fine as well. I use this monitor with my laptop and videos look just fine.
thanks for the help.