Space as such has no colour, it is just the place where light can pass through.

If there is an object giving off light in space, such as a laser pointer  or a star, or a ruby in the starlight, then we see the colour of the light that hits our eyes. It looks very much like the same light in air, except that there is very little in space to interfere with it, absorb it or bend it, so everything looks very sharp.

Another thing, about the pictures. Before you judge, you must make sure whether the picture is black-and-white! This is not always easy to tell, because many space photos and many astronomical photos are in false colours for various reasons.

Then again, many of the objects in space are in fact various shades of grey in colour, covered in dust, and you are seeing things that are grey.

Do not take the colours too seriously unless there is an explanation of what the real colour is. For instance, sometimes they will colour a picture to show the temperature, when no one cares about the real colour.

I think the bla bla about our eyesight means something like the following:

we can see colours only if we have MUCH light. At dusk and at night everything except light-emitting and very brightly lit objects looks black-and-white too.

BUT in space there are light-emitting objects! We can distinguish the reddish shade of Mars with our naked eye!

And anyway, a camera doesn't need so much light to fix the colours, as we can simply increase the opening time.

That's why I think probably the photos and videos that look completely black-and white are just black-and-white photos and videos. We don't think in the fifties everything was b/w because the movies are so, do we?

In some parts of space there might really be little colour for us to distinguish, though. But so there is in a winter landscape, for instance...

Beige...

http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~kgb/cosspec/

The colour receptors (cones) in our eyes need more light than the ones that just register brightness (rods).

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html

 So for example, stars vary a lot in colour and e.g. some are yellow, some blue, some red, but to our eyes at a first glance if you aren't an astronomer then most of the stars in the sky seem white. If you look closely you may notice some have a red tinge (e.g. Betelgeuse which is a red giant, or Antares) and some may a bit blue-ish. If you could see them close up then they would be much more vivid in colour many of them. Just don't get enough light to trigger the colour receptors in our eyes strongly.

Similarly gas nebulae such as the Orion nebula - in the "sword" of Orion - should be reds and blues there but in small telescope or binoculars just looks white most likely.

The Aurora borealis similarly - for a much closer to Earth example - looks white when it is faint -you only see the greens, reds and blues when it is very bright. The colours are present all the time, but when the Aurora is faint, the colours are so dim that they don't trigger the colour receptors in our eyes so we see the Aurora as white although it is "really" coloured.

Then - many things in space also are grey. The moon rocks are basically shades of grey to our eyes. So is ice - and many things in our solar system are made of ice. Amongst the moons of the various planets, only Jupiter's moon Io is brightly coloured because of sulfur deposits on it. Others have interesting pastel shades e.g. Europa (also a moon of Jupiter) and Triton (moon of Neptune).

The planets are interestingly coloured to our eyes many of them so you have

Mercury - grey

Venus - pale yellowish

Earth - pale blue

Mars - red

Jupiter red / orange

Uranus - greenish-blue

Neptune - bright blue

See for instance this picture of neptune

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune 

So there is a fair bit of colour in our solar system and in the universe, also a fair amount of grey things too - but because of limitations of our eyes in low light conditions then many things that are coloured will seem grey from a distance or in low light conditions.

Also - our eyes miss many things as the light we can see is very limited in its range.

To help there, to make details easy to see, then astronomers often use "false colours" to show distinctions our unaided eyes can't see (a bit like use of thermal imaging cameras at night).

So - some NASA photos will show things much as we would see with our naked eye. Some show them as we would see them if our colour receptors were much more sensitive than they are - so basically natural colour but light intensified. Some use false colour similar to thermal imaging.

And the universe is a colourful place even to our own eyes if you know where to look.