I just put a new LiteOn Combo drive in a Win2000 system I've had in my
office for a while, to occasionally watch movies on DVD. I've installed
PowerDVD 6, an OEM version. The DVD plays but the movie is extremely dark,
so dark it's hard to make anything out at all, and there is no apparent
color. Tried reinstalling PowerDVD, made no difference. Does not respond to
any of the controls in PowerDVD.

At first I thought it was the new drive that had a problem, or possibly
PowerDVD, but I find I can't watch small video files on Windows Media Player
either. The same problem, extremely dark image.

So I'm wondering if there's some problem with my graphics card, a GeForce3
Ti 200. I've installed the 93.71 drivers. Monitor is a 15" LCD. Other than
trying to play a DVD or WMP video, the display looks great. No problem
running a graphics benchmark like 3DMark2000.

I find I can get pretty normal brightness and color with DVDs in PowerDVD
and video files in WMP only by moving the Hardware Acceleration slider down
to the 3rd position, "Disable all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations."
I've never had to do that before on any computer.

Is it possible that my drivers are too new for good video performance on
this GeForce3? If so, can anyone recommend more suitable drivers?

Neil