Let's go ahead and presuppose all the possible options. I for one have NEVER even considered f.lux and yet you suggest it like it's the most common program or pre-installed; which is ridiculous. Fact is, low quality rips around here are just that, low quality, washed out, choppy, blocky, etc. People here take no real consideration into ripping quality. I exclusively use Media Player Classic. It has options to adjust the output Brightness, Contract, Hue, etc. If you forget to reset per video, it can make you think the video is bad. Unfortunately, rips here are crap lately. There is no reason a BR or DVD can't be 4-8 GB in size, but yet we get ridiculous MP4 that are 700 MB or something. Internet speed and basic hard drive space have no need for this any longer. This video is washed out, that simple - it's bad, it is NOT user error.