XPS 17 9710 External Display via HDMI Quality Issues

I have an XPS 17 9710 with NVIDIA RTX 3060 gpu. The external display I am connecting to is a Sony Bravia A8H OLED 4K display.

If I copy a video file to a USB stick and play it from the TV's USB port, the video plays in very high quality with accurate colors, contrast etc. BUT, if I connect my XPS to the TV via a USB-C to HDMI cable, and play the  exact same video from my laptop (using VLC media player) to the TV, the picture is much lower quality.

The aspect ratio seems to be accurate, but the picture contrast is far too high, the colors don't seem accurate and the resolution is lower (or noise reduction is too high).

I have played around with every TV picture setting: no luck. I have checked the XPS settings and the external display shows as "Sony Bravia" on some control panels, but in Device Manager, it is installed as "Generic PnP Display" with a generic Microsoft driver.

The picture isn't "unwatchable" per se. But I am puzzled as to why the quality is poorer when the laptop is supplying the picture vs. the TV's own media player.

Has anyone noticed something similar?

Options I've thought of:

1. Because output from laptop is through Intel integrated graphics instead of NVIDIA card?

2. TV settings?

3. Laptop driver or graphics panel settings?

4. VLC player settings?

5. Cable issue? (seems unlikely as it is a high-quality cable and doesn't cause this effect on a different laptop.)

I have had other laptops and never had a similar situation. Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance.