Textarea and converting entities

I guess you can use PHP's htmlentities() function:

PHP Code:

<?php echo form_textarea($inputs['PAGE_CONTENT'], set_value('PAGE_CONTENT', htmlentities($row->PAGE_CONTENT))); ?>

When i took out the set_value() function from the form_textarea(), I would get the correct values sometimes and other times they wouldn't show up. Do you know if I should be using the set_value() function at all for the form_textarea() function or would it just be easier to not use the helper for the text area and just use plain HTML and echo out the value inside of a text area html tag.

Also for anyone reading this now. How should I store HTML from the WYSIWYG editor in the database. Should i be running it through any of Codeigniter's form prep/validation rules or any other PHP functions or is storing plain HTML OK.