Please help me protect my new TV (surge protector advice)

UPS and surge protector

http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=23

Another good company is http://www.tripplite.com/index.cfm

Both have a number of products at different levels (and price ranges).

Don't waste your money on those products that claim to "clean" your "dirty" electricity.

my best friends house got hit by lightning and half his electronics where fried.. but everything plugged into his monster surge protector survived.. good news it survived, bad news is his insurance replaced all the destroyed electronics so he didn't get a new tv ha ha ha.

UPS cost more but provide more protections. Surge protectors provide protection from surges but not sags (under voltage). When power grid supplies an under voltage it will overload power conditioning components in electronic equipment.

Cheaper UPS are standby meaning you use the power grid electricity and when it becomes too high or too lower you start running off battery.
The best UPS offer what is called line conditioning. In this type of UPS incoming power is always converted into DC and fed into the battery. At the same time the battery power is converted back to AC and fed to your TV. This ensure always you are getting perfect power signal (120V, 60Hz, perfect sine wave form). How much power conditioning you "need" will depend on your comfort level. I work in a server room for large pharmaceutical support company. Generally our budget for power and cooling is about 30% of the hardware cost. If we spend $5000 for a server we anticipate needing to spend about $1500 on power & cooling.

Is it safe to plug 5 electronic devices into a surge protector which is connected to an outlet that is only among one other outlet? I'm not exactly sure how much electricity goes to that area of my house... but I only use 4 of the components at one time, at most (and only 3 at most on the surge protector).

Look for a UPS that will support the wattage draw of your TV. The one I am using will provide 450 watts and since my 42 inch LCD only draws 250, it was ample at $160.

Also, the cleaner the power output, the better. Some of the cheap UPS on the market output a "square wave" which can be hard on some equipment.

A direct lightning strike will usually go right through a surge suppressor. At least that is what I have been told. That said, I still use an APC 1500 XS UPS for my computer and APC surges for all my other stuff. The Belkin PureAV stuff looks good as does the Panamax products.

You want the best surge? These are probably up there: http://www.surgex.com/

They do not use conventional MOVs like most brands.

Yes you can but you lose the option to set shut down times. Which doesn't really matter on a tv.
I believe for some tvs (fan cooled DLP, plasmas, etc) that they still need to have power once shut off since they use a cooldown stage.