IMac Display failing after 1 year of average use.

Question

I have a mid 2011 27" iMac (the one with thunderbolt)  and the display is starting to fail after 1 year of average use (an hour of use every day on average).  The display is now much dimmer on the left half of the display (the GPU sits underneath that portion) and also flickers the whole display now and then to a lower brightness.
I am about 45 days out of warranty and basically will have to cough up $500 to have it fixed by Apple.  My questions are...  Has anyone else ever had this happen to them?  The genius bar employee thought that it was something he has seen happen to displays when exposed to heat over long periods of time.  So basically playing starcraft 2 and doing video encoding killed my display if you believe that to be the cause.
Are there any conditions in which apple would recognize this as a manufacturing defect and fix it free of charge?  Otherwise it looks like im writing a check for $500 next week.

Answer 1

Today a dark streak showed up on my display right in the middle. It is shaped like a zebra stripe but is dark grey and wont go away.
I too have a mid 2011 27" 3.4GHz i7 iMac with a 2GB Graphics card . Im about 50 days out of warranty.
Seems like its perfect coincidence  for apple that 50 days after my warranty runs out, the most expensive thing to repair breaks.
After doing some research it seems like there is a lot of people with this model experiencing this problem.
Pretty sad that my 2005 iMac is holding up better than my brand new iMac.
Been saving up for it for like 4 years and I dont have the money to repair it.
I tried everything, I knew none of the stuff i tried would work but i still tried resetting the PRAM repairing disk permissions all that good stuff. I even have an air purifer/dehumidifier in my room so i dont know what caused it.
I didnt think i needed applcare because ive had my other imac since 2005  without a hiccup.
Ive rendered out 3d animations using the cpu at 100% for days and it still runs fine.
Havent even used my new imac for anything that would put stress on it.
What i do notice is that it runs hot all the time. ever since I got it. Sometimes just doing basic stuff such as browsing safari it can get so hot where i cant touch it. my GPU normally stays at around 70C and the hottest its been was 80C which is still safe. The alluminum is supposed to transfer heat better but all it does is retain heat more and get super hot. the old plastic one i have is 10x cooler.
What i did notice today tho when my screen problem happened, is that the GPU temperatue is at 50C and wont go above it. I monitor the temperature with istat  and never have seen it at 50C and below unless i am just doing a fresh boot.
What really concerns me tho is how the screen went out so close to when my warranty expired.