Oh man, I'm really sorry for you. I'm glad the family has agreed to help you pay to replace it.
My TV (not nearly as nice as yours) has a built in DVD player and my dad insisted we take it on a trip in case we wanted to watch DVDs there. Well somehow in the car something got unaligned in the player and whenever you play DVDs, it makes a nice grinding noise. You can still play things, it's just really hard to hear them. I still haven't replaced it.
Anyway, sorry for the pointless post, and good luck getting a new TV.