There are two colorspaces commonly used in video today, which are defined in Rec. 601 and Rec. 709 respectively. Simply speaking, Rec. 601 is mainly used for analog sources, while Rec. 709 mainly is for HD TV and BD.
So how do VLC handle this? It assumes everything is Rec. 601 and you get something like this:
The bottom left is from a DVD and the top right is from the BD release. In comparison, here is how it looks in Overmix, using Rec. 601 for the DVD release and Rec. 709 for the BD release:
VLC also seems to ignore the gamma difference between Rec. 601/709 and sRGB, and it handles 10 bit content in a way that reduces color accuracy to worse than 8 bits sources. Behold, the histogram from a Hi10p source:
Free stuff might be nice, but this is what you get…
EDIT: I messed up the studio-swing removal in Overmix (which is now fixed), so the colors were slightly off. It was consistent between rec.601/709 so the comparison still holds. Overmix might be nice, but this is what you get…