by Romanticapped » Tue Jan 21, 2014 12:20 am
Okay, I don't usually get to answer my own questions, but I found a solution for hazy, hued or glass-like images. (At least in this case.)
Turns out there was a faulty or corrupted file in the video driver. ATI has a lot of hardware compatibility issues with some of their software it seems, especially true with tv cards and video cards. I went through FIVE different driver versions and had to use one from 6 years ago to resolve the issue, now I have crisp well balanced images again. Funny it mainly seemed to affect SMPlayer in .avi format, that is why I thought a codec or filter might be the problem. So if you have a similar video quality issue and have recently updated your video card driver, try an older version, I hope that helps anyone else who might have similar issues. Seems this is an issue of new driver updates being too new for computers 5 to 6 years or older. Part of the push to force people away from XP I suspect.