Q: What is the best way to clean my LCD TV screen? I have a 37-inch model with a matte screen surface.

A. It is easy to scratch or damage the screen if you use the wrong cleaning solutions or a cloth that has any abrasive properties. Even some paper towels have fibers that could scratch your screen. For this reason I strongly recommend all TV owners make a small investment in a proper cleaning kit. You can use it to clean your computer monitors as well.

These kits contain a spray bottle of solution and a cleaning cloth, both guaranteed to be safe for the screen. The best kits include a microfiber cloth that is highly absorbent, picks up dust easily, and of course, will not scratch the screen.

As much as it pains me to recommend any Monster Cable product, the Monster Cable kit TV CLNKIT is the best value I know of. It lists for $19.99 and includes a generously sized bottle of cleaning solution and a microfiber cloth of excellent quality. It's a very good product and a very good buy.

As for why it pains me to recommend a Monster Cable product, Monster Cable is largely responsible for establishing the silliness of high-priced audio cables and speaker wire, one of the biggest scams on the face of the Earth. They also have a penchant for suing small businesses they don't compete with. Just do a Google search under "monster cable lawsuit" as well as "monster cable blue jeans cable" and visit www.monstercable1.com on the Web. It recently suffered a major PR disaster over the lawsuit it filed against Monster Mini Golf, and it makes great reading! Visit www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/monster-cable-sue to read more online.

Still, despite what I think of Monster and the way it does business, I do not know of a better cleaning kit for less than $20, or a better one selling for more money. The kit also is very easy to find at retail. For these reasons I feel obligated to tell readers about it, and if you pick one up the next time you are shopping, you got a good deal and did yourself and your TV a favor.

If you would rather not do business with Monster (and I definitely do not recommend their cables or speaker wire), look for the Surface brand distributed by Audiovox. The SURF200 kit is a good buy. I'll try and find some more Monster alternatives to recommend in the future.

Q: I received a DVD from France that was made by transferring a minivideotape to a blank DVD disc. It will not play on my DVD player; the display reads "Not Regional." It will play on my laptop.

I was told to find a DVD player that would play foreign DVDs. So far, I haven't had any luck. Any suggestions?

A. The key words are "region free DVD player." A Web search under those terms will reveal lots of options.

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