I've found a bug in modulate that only occurs in HDRI enabled ImageMagick 6.6.0-9 apparently.
convert_hdri input.ppm -modulate 100,150,100 -depth 8 -quality 98 -sampling-factor 1x1 output_hdri.jpg
convert_normal input.ppm -modulate 100,150,100 -depth 8 -quality 98 -sampling-factor 1x1 output_normal.jpg
The input and output files are here:
http://rnbc.dyndns.org/pub/imagemagick_ ... dri.tar.gz
The results:
HDRI:

Normal/16bpp:

The normal version is the one that comes in Ubuntu 9.10:
Version: ImageMagick 6.5.1-0 2009-08-27 Q16 OpenMP http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2009 ImageMagick Studio LLC
The other was compiled by myself with HDRI enabled:
Version: ImageMagick 6.6.0-9 2010-04-03 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2010 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: HDRI OpenMP