Wii Display Problems - Help!

I just looked through this board (most of it, not all) and couldn't find this topic, so here goes:

The Wii in my house is barely a year old. Been working fine, no problems with anything. (Store bought games, downloaded games, etc.) Upgraded to a LCD TV, still worked fine. Was running Wii through L2 on dvd player.
Around Xmas, I bought some component cables for it. (Not sure what brand, can't find the package or receipt.) Still worked fine.
My roomie and I were playing SMB3 and figured out that you can 'pause'/'save' the game, so we could play a little bit, go to bed, come home from work and resume play.

We left it like this for quite a few months (2 or 3), as I could never talk him into finishing.
****PROBLEM STARTS HERE****
About two weeks ago, we started it up, got into the game, but as soon as we connected the second controller and closed out of that menu, we have audio, but no video.
I tried everything, just the one controller (same), using the original AV cable that came with the Wii (same), and even the other downloaded games (same).
It will still play games from discs though, can navigate through the Wii menu fine, etc.

Did we leave the game 'paused' too long? Could it be the cable? The TV? The Wii????!!!!!

Wii is unmodded, FYI.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I need my SMB fix!!!!!!!