Electronic Nightmare

We have entered Phase 2 of the Mauk Family electronic nightmare. In order to understand the full extent of our exasperation, you will all have to travel back in time with me to pre-Phase and Phase 1 of this electronic adventure.
(insert squiggly lines and dream sequence musak here)
Pre-phase: About 2 weeks ago, we noticed that our DVD player, the one Andy has owned since before we were married, was skipping a lot. At first we attributed this to our 2 year old handling the DVDs herself. However, when the newest movie (Happy Feet, in case you were wondering, which E pronounces "Happy Seet" - we're still working on F's) began to skip and we knew it wasn't scratched, we figured it was our DVD player. We tried multiple disks and they all skipped badly, whether they were scratched or not. So, we bought a new DVD player.
Phase 1: Yesterday evening, after supper we were watching the end of one of E's movies and the stereo system just popped (and I mean popped like we thought we were being shot at) and quit working. I thought Andy was going to cry. He is quite attached to surround-sound.
Phase 2: Tonight, Andy tried to hook the DVD sound up to the TV. He got it all hooked up correctly but when he put in the movie, the feedback on the TV was so irritating you can barely hear the sound on the movie because of the buzzing.
Currently: Andy is on the phone with Sony. They are telling Andy to do all the things he's already tried. He's rolling his eyes and mocking the woman on the phone as she fumbles through the written trouble-shooting instructions. He's mentioning that maybe (can you see the hope and twinkle in his eye?) it's the TV and we need to get a new one. (Matt and Scott, keep your comments to yourselves)
So, if Andy resists the urge to bomb Sony's local headquarters and if nothing else breaks, I think we'll have to figure out which option is the best road to Electronic Equilibrium.