[as always, click an image to enlarge and read]
I don't own a flat screen TV, laptop, or flat-screen monitor. The 17 inch CRT I've been using with the large footprint on the desk still works, it's aged as I have without quitting, and that means this is more flagging an idea because it looks both simple and effective, rather than resoundingly endorsing something I have never used.
That said, the product called a "TV Screen Protector," an is an optically clear impact-resistant acrylic protective shield, to fit over a vulnerable flat screen [many probably have seen the Southwest Airlines throw-me-a-hard-one ad], with the cover designed to absorb threatening impacts while not degrading image viewing quality [enlarge the screenshot]. Aircraft and racing hydorplane cockpit canopies are polycarbonate, but acrylic is more common and probably a shade bettter in optical quality. The protector comes in a range of sizes, per the vendor's faq page, here. The screen protector's vendor's website is here; and says:
It happened to me...
After my seven-year-old smashed a hole in my new $2,500 LCD TV with a Wii remote, I realized that there was no way I would chance it again with my new TV. So here is the TV Screen Protector! It's made of ultra high strength acrylic and nearly indestructible.
And if that wasn’t enough
The Best Buy Product Protection Plan does not cover damage to the LCD TV screen. Bye Bye extra money :(
A little web searching revealed Best Buy apparently will not generally warrant against all possible ways of impact damage to the screen on flat-screen devices they sell consumers.
You can read. Here, Best Buy clearly says:
Accidental Damage from Handling
Accidental Damage from Handling (ADH) coverage is a benefit that can purchase (on qualifiying products) for an additional price over the standard Performance Service Plan. During the term of the Accidental Damage from Handling Performance Service Plan, we will repair or replace the product as necessary to correct any damage to the product. Accidental damage from handling is defined as: "Unintentional damage to a product as a result of daily usage; such as spills and drops." Immersion in liquid is not covered. ADH covers product from normal daily usage and the way the manufacturer intended the product to be used.
(italics emphasis added) Words of warranty limitation, qualifying and narrowing language, is problematic -- as well as "additional price" having to be paid Best Buy meaning how much, exactly, for what exact coverage on which product, etc. "Weasel words" is the term sometimes used for limitation of risk wording, especially such as, "normal daily usage" in "the way manufacturer intended," which is open to misunderstanding.
Don't drive nails with the flat-screen TV, but aside from the obvious, what's "normal" is as open a question as who's "normal," and foreseeing what folks an ocean away at Toshiba "intend" is less gospel than guesswork.
There's the devil in the details and a lawyer's writing behind every warranty, remember that, and Tom Waits' "Step Right Up" teaches,
[...]
step right up
You got it buddy: the large print giveth
and the small print taketh away
Step right up
[...]
It may sound like fraud to some uninitiated people to hide such disclaimer language in paperwork or online where nobody reads it anyway except obsessive types, but that apparently is common retailer - consumer product practice. The norm, not the exception.
I don't pretend to know ins-and-outs of consumer warranty coverage drafting, and Best Buy has Costco and Sam's Club as competitors where it must be at least approximately even, in customer treatment. But none of the three wants to take risk two years after a sale, without exacting a price. I do not know what market share ratios exist between those three, or what basic and extended warranty coverage you can purchase for a few hundred extra from any of them [but this protective shield product is not adding a few hundred extra, and instead is sold at well below "few hundred extra" pricing].
Moreover, some have published online dissatisfied commentary over service and warranty terms even when extended coverage is purchased; see, e.g., here, here and here.
Go a step further - you bought a 42-inch super-hummer flat-screen from Circuit City. With an extended warranty. Yet recently the entire company and franchise chain went kaput. Guess about the ongoing effectiveness of your warranty coverage. Consumers can face caveat emptor, for a host of reasons. Things happen.
Have a look and give it a try. While under ten years of age in a sibling dispute I threw a metal toy cap pistol at my sister's head from about six feet away. She ducked about as well as Bush with the shoes, and I put out a window pane. It was a learning experience and had flat screens existed then and she'd stood in front of one, I'd have learned an even harder lesson. Things happen. A protective shield against childhood mistake is a sound thing.
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You might not be best using a steamroller to crush a peanut. For any who cares for a convoluted story, there is one. I discovered this screen-protector product while looking online for software to install to be able to use the CD/DVD burner drive on the Windows XP workstation I use, so that I might be able to burn to DVD-RW for data backup [seven gigabyte DVD data backup capacity per burn]. I have an 8-gig thumb drive for up to that, and then I hoped to burn the DVD, while then holding incremental data between burns on the thumb drive. We had a disk crash in the household recently, so mending one's ways is timely, backup-wise. And, even a single seven-gig data space is a whole lot of data. The thumb drive alone should satisfy most backup needs.
But wanting DVD writing capability only for backup and not entertainment needs meant I was looking for a lean, quick and easy answer. A tech consultant, Matt at ECI in Coon Rapids, (Enterprise Communications, Inc., eci4networks.com, 763-783-0100) who is quite capable and knowledgable, suggested I download the Nero product trial version off the web, install it, and see if my hardware/firmware/operating system combo would get that to write DVD from the drive.
Nero and Roxio appear to be the leading multi-feature DVD products at present, as best as I can tell off the web after hours of looking - each being quite multi-featured.
The ECI technical and engineering advisory people have to be able to answer a range of questions, and provide product support for a range of client needs so that a single proven reliable multi-feature product - one and not a bag-full of several specialized tools - is best for them to provide clients - given customer support at pricing at the hourly rates that corporate phone and data network custom customer needs are serviced at these days for systems beyond the Geek Squad level and market niche. Like Vegas, you pay to play.
Nero 9 took quite long to download. Their servers must have had high bandwidth demand that day. The DSL can support hundreds of K bandwidth, but the Nero server was chugging out the download at 17 +/- 3 K, low, low, low speed, in servicing the download.
Installation of the 800-meg plus product took comparably long, and the range of options and product spectrum seemed unlimited. Bottom line, I got data files burned onto a DVD, from Windows XP, with the firmware of the TSST [Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology] HS-S182D drive in the desktop station. I had first updated the system via the latest vendor firmware available on the web. Prior to that Nero use I could not get the drive to recognize the writeable DVD-RW format, but the vendor configured installation --software/hardware/firmware before Nero and the firmware update did burn data files to writeable CD [at far less capacity than DVD].
It would recognize a commercial DVD [but I did not have a codec needed to decode and view it, while Microsoft had a screen error message link to a Microsoft support page telling me of several vendors selling codec software - it not being a Microsoft product for Windows XP, but only supported by Microsoft in Vista (and presumably in the beta version of Windows 7)].
In any event that established the drive.
For me, and my needs, Nero was not the answer. It was the steamroller for a peanut crushing task. I could take weeks to learn it to become an optical media specialist, (not a personal goal), or I could look for something sleeker. I found the Cheetah line of products, homepage here, and it indirectly led me to the screen protector sister-site. Cheetah has a command line product for scripting, a quick burner that inserts burn options when you right-click a directory or file, and a lean gui interface product for DVD burning,their DVD Burner 2. Reasonably priced, and appearing to meet my needs. Fifteen day trial download for anyone needing less complexity than Nero. Have a look. I have days left on the free trial to play with each item, each with a good niche, and assuming it works as I expect and I can use it with the Windows XP Pro backup utility to meet my requirements, I will be a happy user. Nero is great for those who want all it is. I want and need less, and the speed differential and learning curve advantage fits me with the product better fitting my needs.
DVD is new, and multi-session protocols uniformly accepted are absent, so it looks as if you do one write as if it's one-shot medium whether DVD-R or DVD-RW, or with the RW option you can copy back to a temp space on the hard drive anything partly written to a DVD that has NOT been closed, erase, add the new material to the backloaded stuff, and do a single write to the DVD-RW of old and new data. But rewritable optical media, for backup, should not be over used in write-erase-rewrite cycling, and it should be reasonably stored. If you need the backup data you need it uncorrupted, so think things out for your procedures in advance. Measure twice, cut once, as tailors and seamstresses say. It saves time. It avoids grief.
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DISCLAIMER. I have no ties or cash interest in any product or service vendor mentioned. Terry Hendriksen, ECI's owner, is a personal friend dating to when he was on the City of Ramsey council. The Cheetah and TV Screen Protector people are in Florida and I've never met anyone from that business. If I put a link on the blog I can get free Cheetah product, but I don't carry ads; and a review-commentary is posted without any idea of whether it gets me anything but "Thank you" and full price for the product. Whatever, it was worth a mention or I'd not have mentioned it. Free product would be nice, but it's not an expectation in posting.
_______UPDATE________
I put the post up last night. Nothing more to say about the Cheetah DVD software except I expect to be using it. On the TV screen protector, warranties, return policies - links and data may change and you should nail that down yourselves when purchasing - but here's starting info - Best Buy, again, here; Sam's Club, here: Costco, here; (and Walmart presumably comparable to Sam's Club so I did no searching there).
The point to consider when you see as-manufacturer-intended limitations language such as Best Buy uses, does that mean they might argue you void even extended warranty coverage by using a screen protector because the manufacturer does not market and ship one? Can it be suggested that a screen cover impedes intended heat dissipation on a flat-screen wall mounted? If you don't tell them you used one, how will they know to argue that?
The TV Screen Protector website notes, here, that on the face there are perimeter "feet" spacing the protector away from the TV allowing "breathing room" and elastic spacers on top for a snug fit [and hence allowing air flow space on sides and top].
Here are two screen shots, click either to enlarge and read.I don't know how hot differing flat screen TV units can get after a day's viewing, and whether there'd be any incremental heating from using a facing screen.
Consider that, consider the extended warranty cost, and see if any of the stores have an in-house protective cover feature for sale. If so, then they endorse use of such an item, etc.
It can all be spun out, and there is upside and downside to every choice and option.
If you buy a facing screen and the TV fails say 17 months after purchase of the TV and shield, and you did not buy vendor extended coverage and want to blame the shield vendor, then what?
Go to Florida and file a small-claims court action? Hire a Florida lawyer to do it? Those are not realistic options.
So, bottom line, if you in your judgment want to partially "kid-proof" an expensive entertainment item, and decide to do so with a device that obviously sits on the TV in a way that lessens air-flow somewhat and is not supplied with the TV by its manufacturer, that's a consumer choice - an informed choice since overheating is a possibility and running the unit a month or so after purchase and before ordering the shield is an option - see the heating w/o anything between children and the optical flat panel first. You then can guess whether your unit, in your house, at home comfort heating/AC levels you use, has any overheating threat if you put the TV Protective Screen onto it.
If you already have a big expensive flat screen TV, and think, "I'd like that protector, it would make me feel better," you have the TV on the wall to see how much heat it appears to put out, before buying a shield product.
Do what you think best, it's your world and choices.
I will email a post link to the shield vendor - they can email back or post a comment about whether they have ever had a single complaint out of how ever many units sold, alleging overheating. That would be useful. They can buy an inexpensive digital thermometer with remote sensor, and test a representative TV with or without the shield on, and put the numbers on their website. There are options. Consumers deserve the best total informaiton available. That, all consumers hold in their hearts and minds as "only fair."
More on data backup. One final thought, if I set up the DVD and Cheetah products and it does a bang-up job of what I want, a data backup option, I will provide detail to Hendriksen of ECI so they can add such fact to their knowledge base. If service time is billed at $90+ per hour, no customer wants to pay for learning curve, so I expect any such info will be welcome.
They might like the Cheetah software as an option for customers.
Buying a large stand-alone hard drive with near tera-byte capacity is now a small network option these days, prices are such that it's so, and such a unit can be a "backup server" for the remainder of the network. It's infrequent that a hard drive fails. It would be far more infrequent that two would, a workstation drive AND a backup server, so it's sensible. The backup server is not stressed daily and as long as it is monitored enough so that a failure would be noticed, it's a way to go on a small network, especially for a business user having government obligations to preserve data.