My MacBook screen goes dark sometimes.

Question

I've googled this problem and there's a few people with the exact same problem and lots with similar problems, but no one is coming up with a certain answer.
It's a MacBook, running on 10.5.8, two and a half years old, 13.3 inch screen. Bought new in October 2008.
It's been happening for about a week now. The screen will randomly go dark, often when it's moved. However, sometimes I can move it and it's fine, and sometimes it goes dark when it's not being moved. Ahhh, vagueness, sorry!
Things are still on the screen if I hold it in the right light, everything seems to be running properly. Turning the brightness right down and then back up again sort of works, and if I do it around 5-10 times it "sticks". I can use the laptop for quite a while without it happening again, as if it's warmed up.
It is especially bad when I'm waking it up or switching it on. It's not more likely to happen if it's at maximum brightness, that I can see. Everything's the right colour and there's no flickering, it's just BAM everything's dark.
I don't have an external monitor to try it with, but I'm heading to a Genius bar in a couple of days to see what happens.
I went to the Apple reseller shop I bought the MacBook from, and before I told them it was out of warranty, the guy who was helping me said it looked like an inverter and/or backlight problem. When I told him that it was a common problem in MacBooks he basically laughed at me, the gitwizard.
Sooooo, has anyone else had this problem, and how did you fix it?

Answer 1

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to let you all know what happened. I took the MacBook to the Genius Bar as planned, and straight away the dude told me that it was either an inverter or the backlight was broken. He said it would be much cheaper if it was the inverter (about £60), but the more expensive backlight problem was a lot more likely (£200) and I probably wouldn't be able to fix that myself. So I handed it in, and they had the part in stock, so two working days later it was ready for collection.
It turned out to be the backlight problem, and the whole thing cost me £200. My receipt says "DISPLAY, LCD, 13.3" " and the part cost £169.20.
I guess if you felt like tackling this at home, you'd have to feel confident enough to repair it yourself. Always try the inverter first, because it's cheaper and easier. Then if it didn't work, I guess try to replace the display. He told me that you can't replace just the backlight, it's got to be the whole display. If someone else has more techy knowledge than me and has found a way to replace just the backlight then cool!
I hope this helps someone.