Video's too dark

Maybe this is a blonde thing!! But I don’t understand what I need to do to make my video’s and pictures lighter. I emailed a smart friend and he said to find all the codecs I could to download and hopefully I will have the right one to match what I am doing You got me stumped big guy! Help! A blonde in distress! I just want to watch a video of Survivor when I miss it!

try playing with your display settings.
under start menu settings control panel display.