Hi, This is a bug with a combination of the xserver-xorg-i810 driver and totem (-xine and -gstreamer backends). I'll attach two logs to illustrate:
1. xvattr_boot.log - xvattr output after a fresh reboot 2. xvattr_gstreamer.log - xvattr output after playing a movie in totem (-gstreamer). Note that using the totem-xine causes the same difference as in this log. A "fix" is to run "xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 66046;xvattr -a XV_CONTRAST -v 64" *during* movie playback in totem to restore the proper defaults and give a good quality picture. Setting it beforehand won't work, and running totem again will reset the values back to bad non-default values. I have two separate systems running Edgy (although I've had this same problem with Dapper too), both with Intel chipsets (865G and 945G). On the latter system I use DVI input, but I tested analog and it's the same, so it's a software issue. I installed an NVIDIA card in my older system, and never experience such a bug, nor have I seen any problems with my old Inspiron 8000 laptop with a Mobility M4 (ati/r128) chipset. Why am I sure it's totem's fault? Do a fresh reboot and immediately play a movie in vlc (using Xvideo output) or "mplayer -vo xv" and you'll see that the xvattr variables are untouched - and picture quality is fine; only totem seems to change these values once started and thus create problems with picture quality (until proper defaults are re-set). ** Attachment added: "xvattr output immediately following reboot" http://librarian.launchpad.net/4532752/xvattr_boot.log -- Xv movies on 810/i945 gives horrible color, Gamma https://launchpad.net/bugs/32963 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs