Monitor brightness

[hrgiger]

This is more of a hardware question then a Lightwave one but it certainly does affect the way I see my LW renders.

I've noticed lately that my monitor is much darker then other computers. I've seen some of my renders on friends computers and it's quite a bit of difference. Sometimes here in the gallery, some of the pictures look so dark and I can't see hardly anything. It's not on the actual monitor itself, I've tried playing with the contrast and brightness and all that. I assume it has something to do with settings in my display settings or video card. Do I need to calibrate my monitor?

I'm using a PC, windows XP.

[riki]

What gamma setting are you using? I think from memory Mac is 1.8 PC are 2.2. Some folks set it to 2.0 for an in between look . I recalibrate once a month, should do it more often.