How to fix cracked or scratched glass of a plasma TV

Before getting in any details I must clarify: every plasma TV is made up of a glass plasma display and a plastic or tampered glass protective cover on top of it; what you touch at the front of a plasma TV is not the display itself, which is fairly thin and very fragile. What you touch is the protective glass, which serves dual function - protects the actual plasma display and protects the viewers from the radiation emitted by the display (a UV or other kind of filter - frankly I do not know what exactly, but it doesn't matter as long as you know it is meant to be there to serve such a purpose).

So this article is about the rare case of having an intact display and cracked or scratched protective layer.

This is much more rare than the opposite - intact protective layer and cracked/broken display, but just yesterday a walk-in customer proved it is not impossible to achieve.

How did his kids manage to do it I am still not sure, but he maintained they somehow did and as a result his 42'' Magnavox 42PF7220A/37 ended up with intact display and a cracked protective window, which, being thick and cracked, presented notable obstruction to proper viewing.

He asked if we have such a widow and of course was not surprised to find we didn't. He said he found one on eBay for about $270 or so, but of course that didn't make any practical sense.

So I looked around and simply offered him to use a protector from one of the many 42'' plasma TVs we had from about the same time , which had broken displays or were otherwise laying around waiting for better days to finally go to garbage.

In his case it was a  Vizio P42HDTV10A I ended up giving him the window from.
I made $40 I would have otherwise dumped at the trash and he seemed happy too so I guess price was right for him as well.

He said it was slightly larger, but acceptable.

If you end up in the same boat just go to a few local TV shops and ask them for old units of the same size...I wouldn't pay more than $50 for one, $35 is probably more accurate if you have to do all the work to get the glass out.

Good luck!

Bobby @ Coppell TV Repair