So my folks bought a Mitsubishi DLP 61" last year (I belive it was a 2007 model but could be 06, as its just out of warranty) at Best Buy. They sprung for the higher end model from Magnolia HiFi... its not in front of me so I dont have the exact model.. anyways.. its the first TV they bought and decided not to get the service plan on it... bad idea. (the last two TV's he has had they have used the service plan... so why he decided this would be a good time to stop...) Anyways... they somehow already burned thru a lamp... and now the TV looks like it has some sort of focus issue... if you put a test pattern up, it looks like everything is glowing... so all the colors kind of glow and bleed into eachother. Any idea what may be causing this? The whole screen seems bad, but some areas appear worse than others. I thought it might be related to the bad lamp but they claim it looked bad before the lamp replacement as well. Its so bad it makes even high def look like VHS.

It has to be the lamp. I bet it was going bad and they noticed it going bad then and didn't think it was the lamp.