[masraum]

Out of curiosity, have you guys tried changing the adjustment of the screen for these movies? Crank the brightness, just the contrast, etc....? It seems like most TVs these days have several modes. There's usually some sort of "movie" or "cinema" mode where the screen is darker (for watching with all of the lights out, like in a theater. That's probably why the OP noticed some improvement in vivid. But I think a lot of TVs have one mode that's "custom" that you can set yourself. Set one up for dark shows/movies and then use that setting. Granted, if the movies go from bright to dark, it may look like hell in the bright sections.

I think some of this is related to TVs that don't have a wide range (of nits?) or contrast. For years, more expensive TVs have been pushing their higher range of bright - dark settings, and some modern TVs will even selectively dim and brighten parts of a TV for some scenes to improve the picture.