I was watching TV last night when I heard a pop sound followed by my screen going black and the red lamp LED coming on. I went to Frys, purchased a replacement lamp, and installed it. When I turned the TV back on, it did the normal 30 second warm up, then made a short humming sound, waited another 30 seconds or so and repeated this sound 2 more times before turning off and lighting the red lamp LED again. I have had this TV for 10 months, and have not noticed any degradation in picture brightness. It's still under warranty, but I hate to think I may be without my TV for a couple weeks until they can fix it. So, I have a couple of questions that I hope you guys can help me with:

1. Do the bulbs make a popping sound when they go out? Or could this be indicative of something else?

2. When the bulb goes out, is there any visual signs that you can tell its broken? Does the filament burn out or anything? As far as I can tell, the old one looks exactly the same as the new one.

3. Has anyone else had this problem before and know what it is? I saw this thread (I can't post URLs, but its thread ID 789005) and it appears to be very similar, but it had no replies.

Thanks for the help!