The TV luddite

I abhor setting up electrical devices.
All those wires, cables, connections, and instructions make me apoplectic with confusion.
After a while--and not a few choice verbal curse words--I somehow manage to stumble my way through to making it work. But let me be clear: it's not an easy road getting there.
So I've been putting off turning on my flatscreen TV for the last week because 1) I didn't feel like watching any television, 2) I don't plan on getting cable anyway, so what was the rush?,  and 3) my TV remote control somehow got lost in the move and I couldn't turn on the set anyway.
I stopped at Radio Shack last night and purchased a new universal remote and, lo and behold, they had a sale on AppleTV units. I wanted to get one instead of signing up for cable. A friend of mine told me he was saving over a HUNDRED dollars a month by becoming one of the new "cable cutters". Since I don't have a job right now that sounded like reason enough to try it too.
So I had my new remote, the AppleTV box, and I was ready to tackle the whole set-up. Not so fast. I went to check the wall cable, the one that inserts into the TV, and noticed it wasn't plugged in. I lifted it up and the whole metal end fell off. Great. What is this? It revealed that the end connection was nothing but a bunch of mangled little wires. It didn't look good.

The cable that connects the TV to the DVD player and AppleTV box

Here's the culprit; the end of the cable looks shot

Somehow the electrician bungled this one when he was connecting the flatscreen. He's coming again on Tuesday to work on more of the electrical punch list, so add this to the pile. I'm not sure if this means the whole cable is blown and I need a new one (how will they snake a new cable through the wall I wonder??), but I'm going to just assume it will get figured out. This strategy has done me well with other bigger problems in this renovation so It will have to work again. I just can't watch any DVD's this weekend :(