Apple Macbook Pro contrast dark! Videos unwatchable and editing pictures pointless!

Hello. I have had my 13' Macbook Pro since Sept 2011 and have always had this problem but recently it has been so annoying! I have seen a number of other people with this problem but am unable to find a solution. The colours are fantastic on the screen and the brightness is at its maximum however... but still, any dark colours on photographs, films or online videos are all so dark and which makes them unwatchable or extremely hard to make out.

When I watch a DVD, I have to change the contrast on the DVD menu so I can see the video (night scenes are impossible to watch as everything is so dark), but watching online videos is hard because I am not able to lighten the contrast on my laptop to make it better. I realised this was a problem when I printed some pictures off... On my Apple, if there are dark colours, they are very dark and once again hard to see (subtle shadows are just black). I have to change the shadowing in the settings to make them better. The colours come out fine on my rubbish £300 quid notebook and so far i'm using that over my apple which is such a shame.

I have tried chnaging the colours on the calabriator but it's really hard to get them right. Although I can make the contrast brigher on it, it seems to wash out the colour in everything else. I compared my Macbook pro colours with my friends Macbook and the contrast/dark shadows are the exact same. Is it something to do with the retina display? Or is it because I have Snow Leopard? I have no idea... Either way I really want my screen to be normal so I can watch films without changing the settings, edit my photographs without using other laptops and enjoy my netflix subscription without dreading dark scenes :-(

Thank you.