Calibrating my new LCD monitor

I recently purchased a Samsung 19" 906BW Widescreen 16:10 1440x900 to go with my 512mb Geforce 7600GS. This being my first experience I was wondering what the recommended calibration settings would be to view DVD movies. The optimal resolution gives a slightly blurry and grainy picture when viewed at its native aspect ratio. I was just looking for some advice on how to set it for optimal DVD playback or any necessary codecs I may need. And a side question was if its common when you have black backgrounds if its supposed to have this greyish white coloring. I wasn't sure if this is just a natural effect of the lighting of a LCD as I remembered it being darker on the CRT I had before. Thanks for any feedback and advice anyone can give me ahead of time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah its XP Pro SP2. Thanks. I will start with that suggestion.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I downloaded on a recommendation from a friend the VLC media player and it was a significant improvement and seems to have the tools to make it look good. But maybe I just had too high an expectation that I could get crystal clear clarity from a PC. I had a dual monitor setup and thought it would be cool to have some anime or movie in close proximety while I would work on projects or homework. The LCD does kick ass with photo editing and gaming. I haven't seen any ghosting on this model whatsoever. The only thing that stands out is in darkened areas of games or dvds the black level is more greyish white. It might just be the lighting of the LCD is really high.

This is really a learning experience so far for me.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.