There's no question that the Japanese version looks better. However, adjusting the black levels is quite easy to do in the color correction process with Premiere. I've done it with my last set of screencaps, though I think I went a little too dark once again.

After thinking about what happened to my system last night, it might not be my new capture card that's causing the problem. It was acting up before I installed it, and now still doing it after taking the card out again. Basically what's been happening is my computer will freeze momentarily then reset itself (the equivalent to the Blue Screen of Death on 95/98/Me) anytime I'm trying to switch between an open video window and another program. I thought initially that this was just happening with VirtualVCR and my PVR software, but it has happened a few times while trying to watch my newly downloaded MST3K episodes in Media Player Classic. I have a feeling the problem is my semi-over-the-hill video card. (GeForce4 TI-4600)