video card limitation?

On a Dell Dimension 8400 movie players show movies with
overly-bright, washed out color. Non-movie-player programs
display normal color, such as a still-photograph editor or a
movie editor.

In the ATI Radeon X300 Series driver, clicking the Overlay
tab yields a pop-up: "The overlay controls are automatically
activated during playback of any video file type that
supports overlay adjustment." In the overlay tab the sliders
are ghosted. (The latest ATI driver is installed.)

Since I'm creating the video file and my video editor
(premiere pro) knows nothing about video card "overlay," I
wonder if the ghosted sliders indicate a video card
limitation. Do they?

--David