Crazy though as sony tv's seems to go down easy in thunderstorm from what I can see on a quick google search.
So many have damage even when spending money on obscenely profitable protectors. Fixing your Sony and averting future damage starts by understanding why damage happened - the electrical path.
Lightning seeks earth ground. To be damaged, a Sony must have both an incoming and a completely different outgoing path to earth. A direct lightning strike to AC mains far down the street is incoming to every househould appliance. So all are damaged? Of course not. Damage is an appliance that also makes a best, outgoing path. Inoming on AC mains. Outgoing maybe via its coax connection or HDMI port.
The naive assume damage means that was an incoming path. More often, the outgoing path is damaged. Those connections are often a best outgoing path because a TV cable already (should) has effective protection - a low impedance connection to earth.
Surge passed through everything between an incoming and outgoing path. But only the weakest part in that path fails. It is the only way to estimate what is damaged.
Plug-in (adjacent protectors) simply give a surge even more incoming paths into the TV. No adjacent protector claims to protect from the other and destructive surge. If you did not have 'whole house' protection, then the Sony (and all other household appliances) were and are at risk.
Damage is defined by how a surge connected to earth - the destructive electrical path. Protection is also about how a surge connects to earth WITHOUT entering a building. Two problems to solve: current damage and to avert future damage. That magic box protector did exactly what manufacturer specifications said it would do. And may have made damage easier.
