So Samsung wouldn't help me out.  Great.

I ordered a new ballast for my DLP (HLN-507W), thinking it was probably the ballast that was going out, since the TV occasionally did spring to life (indicating the lamp wasn't completely dead).  After $160 bucks for the ballast, and an hour of ripping apart the TV to install it, my DLP still won't turn on.  Dammit.

So now I have ordered a new lamp ($240, CHA-CHING), and it looks like it will be another couple of days before it arrives.

Great.  Assuming the new lamp fixes the problem, I'll probably leave the new ballast in anyway, rather than return it for a refund.  After all, the lamp isn't anywhere near it's published lifespan, so maybe it was the ballast that was slowly ruining the lamp?  Who knows...

What I do know is that a $3100 TV has now become a $3500 TV, and it's only 4 years old.  Averaging the cost of ownership for this damn thing makes you want to cry.

Damn Samsung, and this newfangled modern technology.  What a crock.  Things were supposed to get cheaper and more reliable as we moved into the future, weren't they?