Hard Drive Formatting Issues - 2011 MBP

Question

I have a late 2011 Macbook pro that started acting up a few weeks ago.  Took it to an Apple store for a consultation and they came to the conclusion that part of my hard-drive not functioning properly.  It just so happened to be the portion that had the bootup info on it (according to the tech).  Rather than pay to have Apple install a new drive, I decided to go for it on my own as I've built more than a dozen PC's over the last 3 years, swapping out a hard drive is not a big deal to me.  Even the tech at the store told me I shouldn't have any issues.   
So I disconnected the battery, installed the new drive, inserted the disk that came with my MBP and I get nothing but a grey screen after the DVD drive makes noise reading the DVD for several minutes.  I did some searching online and found that I could try to download the disk via holding Command + R at startup (just in case something on the physical DVD wasn't reading properly).  The Command + R function shows me my wifi, connects, and downloads what it needs to, but I once again end up with nothing, but a grey or blue screen.  I've tried two hard drives, both with the DVD and Command + R function several times now to no avail. 
Am I missing a step here or could there be something else wrong with my machine?  Are there any other utilities built into the machine I could be running? 
I installed a Western Digital 7200 RPM, 500GB drive.  Same specs as my original drive, but different manufacturer.  I researched and found several other reviews of people using this drive in MBP's.
I re-formatted the original drive a few years back with the same DVD and no issues.  I have no backups or other drives to go off of.  I was running Windows 7 through boot-camp.  Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.     

Answer 1

Thank you for your suggestions.   It is definitely not a dirty disk, damaged disk, or the optical drive.  If the optical drive or disk had anything to do with the issue at hand, a remote recovery from Apple's servers (Command +R) would have worked (failed several times - it connects to Apple's servers and downloads the recovery, but screen goes blue or grey the same as it does with the DVD, after the download completes and when recovery tries to initialize). 
Like I said in my last post (that was edited by the mods, probably bc I linked the class action site).  The issue here is a failed GPU on the Logic Card.  Genius got it wrong here when I went to the store.  If I felt like wasting any more of my time and money I'd take the scrapheap to the store and let them put in a new hard drive and pay their labor to then be told after the fact that I need a new logic board. 
After reading the other thread (Macbook Pro (15" early 2011) horizontal lines on screen and not booting...?) - and reading ALL PAGES, I'm certain the hard drive was never the issue here.  The thread I linked explains several others having the same symptoms my laptop started with (the screen jumping around and lines on the screen) before complete failure of the system.  Several others in that thread have had the same problems trying to reformat as I am having.  The symptoms and results are all the same.  There is a class action lawsuit ongoing for this issue as there have been many hardware failures on these GPUs from this model year.  The Hardware checks I'm running and the ones Genius ran simply didn't pick up on the issue.  Others in that thread have even had replacements fail and the replacements only carry a 90 day warranty.  At this point, it's a 3 year old machine that needs a new logic board, and a new battery, not a worthwhile investment of $300-$500 in my opinion.
Thanks again for your help.