To fix that horrid washed out MOV playback problem on Windows in the Quicktime player. Go to Edit>Preferences> QuickTime Preferences you can disable Direct3D video acceleration. This fixed the low contrast problem I had with the h264 and foto jpeg codecs. I also prefer this solution over the “straight alpha” solution (which I was doing in the past) because the straight alpha method seems to make jittery, slow playback for MOV files.Note it did seem like it maybe caused videos to open up a little slower before playing back, but it still beats the alpha straight method IMO.
Some other great information about the problem.
http://vitrolite.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/quicktime_gamma_bug/