Need help diagnosing a problem

[Sixfingered]

I am fairly new to home theaters. I have an Onkyo 606. Connected to it are a AT&T Uverse cable box and PS3 connected by HDMI and a Wii connected by composite cables. Most of the time it is used for watching tv, but some times when I turn on the PS3, when I switch to the game input that I have it plugged into there is a really loud "surge" (not sure what to call it, but it scares the hell out of the cats), the first time it happened I thought it was going to blow out my speakers. Sometimes that happens and sometimes when I switch nothing happens, the hdmi logo on the receiver just keeps on blinking and I have to turn the receiver on and off a couple times to get it to work. Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening? Has the "surges" messed up something with my receiver? HDMI cable problem? PS3 problem? I believe I have everything running from a power strip, maybe that is not giving everything enough power? I am not too familiar with amps, would that be something I need to look into, or maybe just splitting all the components between two electrical sockets instead of 1? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks much.