"am pretty sure that a 10 year old would be able to wire up our TV & DVD etc better than I could"

hmmmm, knew a 14 yr old the other month who had to plug in a child's karaoke machine to a multiway switch - DVD, VHS, TV, switcher gadget etc - he did such a good job, that when it was necessary to be able to watch the DVD player again, I eventually found it just easier to unplug EVERYTHING, and start from scratch again (he had just unplugged and replpugged things till he got it to work...) .... :-)