I originally posted something in the LCD forum but it really belongs here. What is the best technology to go with if you have kids running around? Seems like the glass covering of the plasma's would be more scratch resistant and generally harder to damage than an LCD? Are the plasma's about as tough as the old CRT's? Are some plasma's tougher than others?

I have a 5 year old son and we have a lot of friends/family with young kids so the possibility is always there for a toy to get thrown around the living room. And no, we do not have a Nintendo Wii and will not be getting one ;-)

There must be tons of people out there with this concern? Or am I the only person on AVS with kids? :confused:

A glass covered screen would indeed provide more protection. All PDPs and some LCDs use glass (Samsung I believe)

Invisible Fence and a shock collar.

The glass on a plasma panel is about 1mm thick, the glass on direct-view CRTs was 8-14mm depending upon size. In LCD flat panels the glass is less than 1mm but underneath a flexible plastic membrane with the liquid crystals in between.

Both plasma and LCD sets can be damaged by flying balsa airplanes, plastic balls, Wii remotes, etc. There are dozens of accounts in this Forum of flat panels totally destroyed by both kids and adults, from a minor stress that a CRT would have shrugged off.

Although plastic screen protectors are available the reflections and glare introduced reduce the performance of a flat panel to less than a rear projection DLA setup.

Your best bets in terms of resistance to damge from best to worst are:

1) Any form of front projector
2) Direct view CRT
3) Any form of rear projector
4) Plasma flat panel
5) LCD flat panel

If you must have a flat panel, my advice is to get an inexpensive one that you could afford to replace on short notice. Then keep it behind some closed doors in a piece of furniture, only opened when viewing the TV. Reduce the probability of breakage as much as possible, then don't sweat it.

Thanks Gary, good advise. I didn't realize the plasma glass was so thin! My problem is that I have a nice dedicated HT room in my basement with a ceiling mounted DLP projector and that is where we watch most all of our movies.

However, that has spolied me so that I can no longer watch the old 27" CRT in our living room. Nor play my xbox there! It is just unbearable even watching the evening news...ahhh! We are looking at redecorating our living room and getting rid of the big honking entertainment stand. A nice flat panel hung on the wall would be sooooo nice. I just wish somebody made one that could easily stand up to a Webkinz flying across the room.

I think I'm going to see if I can find some local material to make a protective cover that can be velcroed to the bezel for optimum protection when the kids are around and easily removed for optimum picture quality when needed.

The kids are usually well behaved but as soon as I hang a $2000 TV on the wall that is the one time my son will accidently turn around with the broom handle while he helps daddy clean up and.... SMACK! Just like he accidently ran into our new car with his bike the very first week we bought it. I know it will happen, it's just a fact of life with kids.

If you must have a flat panel, my advice is to get an inexpensive one that you could afford to replace on short notice.Before havig kids I thought this way as well. Problem is that if you follow this advice you'd better be prepared to live like that for 10-20 years depending on how many kids you have.

In the end my wife and I decided that we did not want to do this. So even though we had a newborn and plan on a second child we bought some nice wood furniture and SS appliances and a wood tv stand and planned to buy a Pioneer Plasma. Yes the kids will probably do some damage to something at some point but what the hell.

Then keep it behind some closed doors in a piece of furniture, only opened when viewing the TV. Reduce the probability of breakage as much as possible, then don't sweat it.Good advice and I did something similar. To minimize the chance of damage we not only train our daughter to not throw things in the house but also to be carefull around furniture. Additionally I put a black fleece blanket over the entire tv stand that is removed when our daughter goes to sleep. I'm also thinking of cheap ways to protect the tv during the day as well. We are planning to get a Wii at some point as well.

The glass of a plasma is thicker than 1mm. It has to hold a vacuum to contain the gas. Since LCD glass is two sheets of .5mm, the two technologies would weigh about the same and they don't.

Plasma are plain glass in the front so they will hold up better to torture.

I was asked a similar question today by my dentist. He was more worried bout finger prints from little kids...Ive noticed fingerprints are less noticable on an LCD...so i told him LCD

The film on the LCD that hide finger prints is reasonably delicate (3H hardness) and can be dented or scratched without too much effort. The front of the plasma can take tons of abuse since it is plain glass

Which type of panels work best when mounted on a tilt mount?. Would that not be the simplest way to put them out of the reach of little children.

Which panels are most on display in pubs and sports bars?. Surely something that is reasonably safe from the rowdy ways of drunks, etc. would be able to survive most of the doings of little kids.

The glass of a plasma is thicker than 1mm. It has to hold a vacuum to contain the gas. Since LCD glass is two sheets of .5mm, the two technologies would weigh about the same and they don't.

Plasma are plain glass in the front so they will hold up better to torture.


In fact, the gas in plasma display cells is at one atmosphere of pressure and there is no internal cell vacuum and no forces on the front glass at sea level aside from thermal effects and a bit of vibration from the electrostatic forces which are the source of "plasma hum". The glass is made as thin as possible to reduce weight but the pressure inside becomes a problem at higher altitudes, plasma displays have altitude limitations, commonly 6500ft.

The plasma front glass is just thick enough to support a polishing process that makes the glass as transparent as possible.

Many plasmas now have anti-reflective or even a matte anti-glare finish.

Plasmas are only slightly more resistant to abuse than LCDs.

The glass bottle holding a plasma is thicker than LCD, period. LCDs have the same "transparent" issues as plasma so if they are the same, they would weigh the same and they don't. LCDs glass is .5mm x two sheets.

The AR coatings only work on the front surface. There is a lot of internal reflection inside plasma displays. (anti-glare do not help reflection; it only dull the front surface so the reflection is not a mirror... it still reflects).

Putting glass or plastic in front of a display will only make the reflection worse. 4.5% of the ambient light will reflect off of each surface, front, back, front of the display, and it all adds together. Protection, yes but at the expense of washout in bright light.

I know putting a protective cover over the screen will obviously degrade image quality but I'll take that any day over a scratched or broken screen! The image degradation certainly couldn't be worse than watching a 27" CRT ;-)

I don't know about kids and higher end stuff, but my Westy LCD monitor has been through hell and back and halfway around the country, and it's still fine with no scratches or anything. It's even been dropped a few times.

Unless your kid chucks a baseball at the thing, the worse is probably a minor scratch here and there. You need to train your kids to not mess around with daddy's sweat new TV.Tell them to play outside whenever possible. Get a nice wood cabinet with closing doors and close them when the panel isn't being used.

Tell your kids that touching of your new panel is totally %100 off limits. If they need watch Barny or whatever, tell them to come get you. Educate the wife as well.

Invisible Fence and a shock collar.

You can be arrested for that in most states!

I sometimes suggest this to my wife for our kids (as I have a horribly abused 50 inch RPTV) and she just gives me the look of death :eek: and can't believe I would even consider such a thing :p.

Yes, yes, yes the children are more precision that the TV, but........:D:D

If I were in your situation, I would get a plasma screen and hang it on a tilt mount with the bottom about 4-6' off the ground. This should keep the kids' fingers off of the TV. A plasma screen should be more durable in case something gets thrown at the TV. I plan to have a separate room for my plasma with a door that can be closed. The room will be for watching TV and movies and playing games (not on a Wii) and nothing else. This, coupled with a lock on the door, will hopefully keep kids from damaging the screen either from friends/relatives visiting or from our own kids whenever we decide to have them.

I guess the ideal solution would be to hang it on the wall and educate your children that it is expensive and they must take care of it. At 5 years old, I'm fairly sure your son would be able to be "trained" quite well. It's the really young kids that you have to worry about mostly from finger prints and the instinct to touch anything that moves (or has a picture that moves). There is always that instinct to throw toys and such too. However, at 5, I would think that your boy is well out of those stages! Accidents will happen (they always do - like you said with the broom handle thing). However, I highly doubt you're going to have to worry about him throwing a ball at the TV if you make it very clear that he is not supposed to do that sort of thing in the house and then keep up with "reminding" him. My 6 year old cousin plays some video games with me on my LCD when I'm at home (or on my parents LCD depending on which TV has the console hooked up to it at the time). He's very respectful, and doesn't touch the screen. However, I trust him to turn the TV on himself (he knows where the power button is), as well as the xbox, ps2, etc... without me being in the room. He knows that it's an expensive TV and to treat it with respect.

On that note, there are plenty of kids that I would never let in my house, let alone around an expensive TV. There are plenty of parents that let their children do whatever they want. Chances are, if your kid is throwing something around that is going to damage you TV, it's also something that is going to be marking up your walls and such. I don't know, when I was a little kid I would have gotten in serious trouble if I had done that sort of stuff inside the house. The point is, at 5, that shouldn't be a big issue. I would be more concerned with putting the TV on a shorter stand and running the risk of him tripping and causing the TV to fall and hurt HIM.

In any case, wall mounting the screen at an adequate height is probably your best option. It eliminates the problem of children possibly crashing into it if they fall. As far as not touching things and throwing things at it, that just depends on how you control your kid. If your kid is throwing baseballs around in the house, don't buy an expensive TV. Obviously, if you have little guests, you may want to make sure that their parents know not to let them play with toys in the TV room. The really little ones always have the desire to shake things around and sometimes they throw things even if they don't mean to. Obviously, putting a 1-2 year old in front of a $2000 TV with a bucket of building blocks would be quite stupid. That would be your fault, not the kids!

In either case, I grew up with a lot of little kids around. I can't remember one time where any of them damaged anything by throwing things at it (at least inside the house). I can't remember any point in which any of our CRT TVs was ever hit by a flying object. Heck, 99% of the time, if they were hurting anything it was themselves (falling off a bike, tripping on the carpet, falling off a bed, etc...). Finger prints... sure lots of um... broken windows/glass cabinets... never...

Physical damage is one thing, but what about the effect of static images that kids tend to leave on the screen and then walk away? Video game menus, DVD menus when the movie is over, TV guide channel images, watching an HDTV channel when an SD program with black bars comes on, that nickelodeon logo, etc...

In my experience, the IR and possible BI from those scenarios gives a strong argument to LCD with kids in a family room. No worries.

There are ways to prevent damage to screens or lessen there effects. My nephew is around 4 and he took a small car and ran it up a friend of his dads Plasma. This scratched the screen. My brother was telling me about this and the whole time all I could think of is that if this happened to my Plasma, I would have a new one and his parents (my brother) would own my old one! I got to looking around and found out that I can spend $500 or so and buy a film that protects the rotor blades of a Blackhawk for my set or I could purchase a Shield of sorts that was made of Polycarbonate. I got a sheet of 1/8" lexan and made a guard, cover, shield or what ever you would to call it to protect my screen from small hands and Wii remotes. Lexan in thicker versions is used in aircraft windshields and 3/8" will stop a shotgun blast. It distorts, but the buckshot didn't get through. Don't know if this helps, but it is an idea.