8 1/2 month old TV went out.

Should be on the board near where the power cord connects. It should be a fuse with pigtails that is soldered to the board. If you had a true lightning strike then the power diodes are probably shot ad well and more than likely the power transistor.

The main board to your TV should be checked. Contact any service technician. Faults occurred due to lightning is not predictable to any body. In most cases, the main board might need replacement. If you wish to get some details; check the site linked here. Pull up older posts. Surf the site with patience. Do a search by type in the brand name of your device at its search box and press "Enter".
http://electronicshelponline.blogspot.com/

Replace or have the powrer supply tested and eventually serviced.
Lightning strikes affect two types of boards in televisions - the power supply by means of entering through the AC line and main boards by means of entering from the external signal sources. External antennas are worst and can totally toast the main board whereas a signal entering through HDMI cable from another device is less likely to be affected by a power surge.
So naturally you start your quest with the power board , which is the usual suspect.

As of right now I do not believe we have an announced service for the power supply board of Sanyo LCD-24K50, but if you do not have any other options you can always try and send the power board for examination/repair through
http://www.coppelltvrepair.com/newservice.

Good luck!

The only fix is to replace the panel and that would not be cost effective. It would be cheaper to buy a new TV.

Your Sony Bravia KDL-46S5100 might have been affected and damaged by the lightning strike. You cannot fix it without the help of qualified technician. It must be brought to your nearest service center.

It wont turn on? Well if it is damaged by lightning the only thing damaged would be the varactors on the power supply. They are there to absorb tremendous surge of electricity. The same way a surge protector works. A worse case scenario is the power supply board is fried up. Then being a non electronic technician you can purchase the whole board or order on line and install them yourself. If you brought it to a shop they will charged you for the labor and the board. Don't buy used boards on the internet because a lot of them are no good in my own experience. Get a new one for about a little over a hundred buck or so.

May be your picture tube got damaged in that lightning. This may be an effect of the magnetization of the picture tube due to a huge electric current passing near it. Try demagnetizing the tube and if it doesn't work get it replaced. Try having a properly working tube of an older television as modern picture tubes lack quality.

leave direct tv cables where they are, and hook up dvd player directly to tv (do not hook up dvd player to direct tv box, it will not work)

power surges generally damage diodes and capacitors causing the fuse to blow, any reputable tv shop can repair for a fraction of replacing this set.

Change the TV.
I had same problem since 3 years after moving from dubai to bucharest i believed that my home theater was damaged during transportation. I tryed all repair shops in my area but no luck, so i used it as a simple mp3 player at home.

Last week, after 3 years, i changed my old CRT tv with an LG LS3000 lcd tv and SURPRISE...my dvd have colours again.