It's nice, glad I could help you figure out photoshop. It can be a cruel mistress sometimes, but it's ultimately a force of good, not evil as some people can think.
Anyways, the common trick I use for photographing equipment in use is this:
Use a tripod, always, that's the biggest thing I can recommend. Now if you're camera allows for controlling exposure settings and f-stops what you should do is with the camera locked down, meter the light so that the room is properly lit and exposed well. Don't have anything on the screen, if you meter with the screen running you won't likely get a good overall image. Take the shot, you'll be making two images to get an overall properly exposed image. So then with the camera in the same place, turn on a dvd, pause it, then adjust the camera so just the screen is metered properly, this "should" make it so that the screen is light but the background and surroundings are way too dark. In photoshop you can then take both images into eachother and supposing that you didn't move the camera, you should be able to composite the images over eachother, just seperating out the screen and putting it into the lit room. It's a cheat, I know, but it can help out a LOT.
Another thing I do is to create an adjustment layer and mask over the screen, because these plasmas and LCD tvs reflect a WICKED amount of ambient shit.
For example, a few of the last photos I did on assignment:
http://www.lawndartdesign.com/Photos/92010005.jpg
http://www.lawndartdesign.com/Photos/91970018.jpg