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I would advise you to pay special attention to the part of the article regarding "RGB Limited" vs. "full-range RGB". Back in the day, television signal black levels rode at something called "setup" ( 7.5 out of 100 IRE or 16 out of 255 levels in digital terms). The purpose was to keep the video signal from interfering with retrace blanking levels, horizontal sync and other TV stuff. A black level of 0 came to be called "negative black". Anyway, flash forward to today, many devices automatically compensate for this archaic "setup" by raising black levels going from digital to analog and pushing them down going the other way. Sometimes, this will happen unnecessarily and sometimes it can happen more than once. This results in either super-crushed, murky-looking blacks or, alternatively, smokey, grey-looking blacks, lacking detail in both cases. This might be what you and SWMBO are experiencing.
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I have Directv at home and I see this often in broadcast movies. I have attributed it to digital artifacts from the compression. This connection goes from the satellite tuner to a receiver and then to a TV so there is no computer involved, per se. I don't think you will see any difference with a different video card. As an experiment, try to play the movie through a different TV and video card and see how it looks. Then try a different monitor with your existing computer and card and see if that is any different. In other words, try swapping one component at a time and see what changes. If nothing ever does then the issue is likely in the movie itself.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Did you know that "Swmbo" means "Swimwear" in Zulu?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Put some foil between the antennae or smack it on the side. This fixed things in the olden days. 
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Nice "Rumpole of the Bailey" reference. But I do wish all of you posters would stop using acronyms. It does not take much longer, and is better communication.
By the way, I used to watch that show all of the time. I strongly recommend it.
Stamp out acronyms.
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I suspect the problem with dark scenes has numerous factors. Others have commented on settings and video quality, to which I can't add anything relevant.
However, I upgraded my video card in 2017 to play Skyrim -- my old card (basic card, ~$60 USD) was not handling the job and the play was jerky. I upgraded to a better card with more RAM and faster components -- the difference in Skyrim was remarkable.
Of greater substance, I also noticed that my system, overall, was faster and the display was crisper. At first I assumed it was the RAM (which does make a difference), but later research appears to indicate the higher quality (and speed) components are the real game changers.
One article (on Tom's Hardware, IIRC) said that RAM was not the problem -- unless you don't have enough. If an application requires 2 GB of VRAM, adding 10 GB won't make any difference. But if you have 1.5 GB, it will.
Unless you're doing highest end gaming, no need to buy the best card. I purchased the previous year's "very good card" at a considerable discount off the original price, and have been pleased with it.
I expect that if you're watching movies, a 4 GB card is sufficient. Please note this is a personal opinion that I cannot directly back up with hard facts. If you buy a new card, you'll need to do some research -- anything I researched is 1.5 years out of date.
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BryanFazekas wrote: I expect that if you're watching movies, a 4 GB card is sufficient.
I have a 2gb card. 
When I was gaming, I was constantly chasing hardware (never using the best, but always at least 1 step behind the current "new thing" because prices were lower). I got to the point that I was no longer interested in chasing the hardware, and so I stopped gaming. I was just wondewring if changing to a video card with more RAM would address the issue. When we had a smaller TV (55 inches) with my current video card, I don't recall there being this problem. With a larger TV, I'm sure that it would magnify problems that may have gone unnoticed before.
I'm going to try the adjustments I found to see if we can mitigate the issues we see - I really don't want to just throw money at it unless there's a guarantee that it would fix the problems.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: When I was gaming, I was constantly chasing hardware (never using the best, but always at least 1 step behind the current "new thing" because prices were lower).
Some years back I worked with a younger, single guy who was into gaming. He purchased the newest video card every 6 months ... something like $600 to $800 a pop. All the video cards I've purchased in my life add up to what he spent on 1 card.
My current card works quite well so I'm not chasing hardware. I'm also not buying newer games to avoid that treadmill (Skyrim with mods is plenty to occupy the down moments when I really have no interest in thinking).
My guess is that a card with more RAM than 2 GB will make a difference, but that's just a semi-educated guess, based upon personal anecdotes and your comment about having a larger TV. Not that you need my agreement, but it makes sense to try adjustments first. You can always buy a better card later.
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I think the TV plays a part.
My Sony 4k monitor / tv is "blacker" than the 2K HP monitors.
The Windows settings for HDR and WCG content target a specific "monitor" / tv; not the display card.
LED is "brighter" than LCD (IMO), etc.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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Reduced a 7.5 hour data pull/import SQL job from 7.5 hours to 20 minutes.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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And staff now hates the new guy.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Everyone seems happy (on the outside, at least). It was an onerous operation that we had taken steps to do once a week until someone complained that they needed the data refreshed every day. Me and a DBA sat down and started looking hard at what was going on, and that's when I noticed that we were pulling almost twice as many records as we needed to.
I'm a hero today, but tomorrow, I'll revert back to being the FNG. Glory only lasts until the next bug surfaces.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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They all now need to work on their things to make it faster. How can they, even remotely, like you?
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Let me guess. You removed three unnecessary JOINs?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Nope. We simply stopped pulling inactive records. Honestly, this reduced the number of records we were pulling from 800k to 500k, and I expected the data pull to only take 4.5 hours, but for the last two days, it's only been 20 minutes, and we even verified that we did indeed pull all 500k records.
I suspect that the data owners also updated their queries that give us the data, but they claim they didn't. It's weird, but I'll take the win regardless.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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We have a weekly report that takes 15 minutes... been running it for a while now... then the other day, suddenly, without any changes to the query, it starts consistently taking 2 seconds.
Sometimes magic just happens!
Although we did also get rid of Kaspersky recently, coincidence?
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We have no control over infrastructure, and anything they do on the servers or to the netowrk is some big secret. Even if they did do something, they wouldn't tell us. Beyond that, if we tell them our processes are suddenly taking a lot less time, they may take steps to "fix" it, and we'll be right back up into the hours-long stuff we were seeing last week.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
modified 3-Jan-19 10:13am.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: if we tell them our processes are suddenly taking a lot less time, they make take steps to "fix" it,
You do realize this is a public forum, right?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: if we tell them our processes are suddenly taking a lot less time, they make take steps to "fix" it,
well more likely they won't believe you are doing it correctly: in their minds if it takes half the time then you are doing something wrong and only looking at half the data
- so not so much "fix it" - but jump through hoops to prove you are not skipping some data/steps or outright cheating. Even when presented with the facts they will still look at you with some degree of distrust (i.e. that you are making it up and even your proof is somewhat fabricated to cover the truth.)
Do be careful,
Saving 10% is OK, 20% yeah, 30% - possible, but just like insurance companies anything over 30% sets off the alarms. 3 hours down to 20 min, 89%, no ones going to believe that ... or trust the system anymore
- any mistakes [related or not] that come up in the future they going to blame your fix ... "damn hacker knew letting him play around with out sensitive system and datas would cause problems - now the whole thing cant be trusted, wonder what else he broke, wonder how much data he lost, we probably need to call in some proper experts to take a look at the whole thing again.
Message Signature
(Click to edit ->)
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Well, we're all really surprised at the outcome, and I ain't sayin' anything to anyone other than the team. We don't want the network nazis coming in and sniffing around.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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musefan wrote: get rid of Kaspersky
 Never trust the Russians for security software. 
At my old job we used Kaspersky and I had to kill it all the time because it caused my machine to be incredibly slow.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Quote: the last two days
You mean, since the New Year started? Coincidence? I think not! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Hmm, I might be tempted to check those 300K records you are no longer accessing to see if there is any null data/duplicates or any other strange data that could be causing SQL to chug along.
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