Poor image quality - Intel graphics profile "IT Content"

[idata]

Hello all. I was very excited to upgrade my aging HTPC recently. I went with the i3 2100, z68 motherboard (Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3) and 4GB RAM on Windows 7 64bit Professional. So I'm using the integrated graphics.

The HTPC is connected to a Sony Bravia KDL40EX521 by hdmi.

So far I've been very disappointed with the image quality and I'm hoping someone here can help.

The image is not vibrant. It's muted. The whites are light gray and the blacks are dark grey. The whole thing is just dull.

The sony has some presets that I can choose from when I'm connected to my cable box. For example I can put it to "Vivid" to brighten the picture up. The colors through the cable box are beautiful, crisp and bright.

However, when I switch over to the HTPC input on the Sony, it does not let me change the picture preset. It is stuck (greyed out) on "Graphic".

I've tried changing settings in the Intel graphics properties. In the advance mode, I found that if I uncheck the box "IT Content", the picture becomes much brighter. However, it does make text harder to read when I'm in Windows, but this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

The problem is, everytime I reboot, the "IT Content" box reverts back to being checked, so I have to manually uncheck it and save every time I boot the HTPC. This is extremely annoying.

By the way, as a test, I loaded XBMC live (linux) on the system, running from a USB key, and the image quality was fantastic. So I'm pretty convinced that the poor image quality I'm getting under Windows is stemming from the Intel graphics driver.

At them same time, I'm sure there must be many people running XBMC to a Sony using the i3 and integrated graphics, so is there just something I'm missing? Some setting I haven't found?

A huge thanks to anyone that can help here. I was so excited about this build, but now I'm pretty disappointed.

Maybe there's some other setting I can change to fix all this?