LCD Gamma/Color Problems

I've searched everywhere and used every calibration utility that I know of, but I still seem to have a big problem with my brightness/contrast and colors on my MBP. I've used the ColorSync utility numerous times, and it never helps.

I first noticed a problem with colors when I was using Photoshop. I design websites and for some reason all my grays are showing as white on my Mac, while on my PC I can easily tell the difference between all grays. Yesterday I upgraded to Leopard and happened to read some articles on the internet about this cool Striped List View in Finder. Well, I don't see any stripes, it's as if my Mac is incapable of displaying that color blue. The really funny thing is that if I drag another window over the Finder window, that window's drop shadow brings out the blue in the stripes and I can see them. I would post a screenshot, but it looks normal on everything except my screen.

Anybody have any ideas?

Have you an external monitor you can test your system without using the MBP LCD?

I have a LCD HD TV that I use to watch movies, so I plugged it into my MBP DVI port. As usual, the screen flashes blue for a second while the computer detects the displays. Then when my screen came back up, I was able to see the blue stripes. Obviously, something is happening to color settings when I change displays. Now I've unplugged from the TV, and the stripes are still showing up like they are supposed to.

So the question is, why are my color settings changing when I plug/unplug into a different monitor?

Mmmm, you got me there... My novice knowlegde stops there unfortunately.