We're looking for a smart tv with freesat instead of freeview - and want to know if you can plug the Sky dish right into the tv and discard the Sky box. Anybody help please?

A very quick search finds
http://www.johnlewis.com/Electricals...tCategory.aspx

and this which may be out of date
http://www.freesat.co.uk/products/hd-tv-range

Yes the Sky dish connects directly into a Freesat TV

I can't help you on the 'smart' side, but you can plug a Sky dish directly in a Freesat TV - Freesat is essentially just an alternative EPG for the free channels on Sky.

Any such TV will have Freeview as well anyway.

The Panasonic range of TVs with Freesat and smart features are very good. iPlayer works incredibly well.

The apps are also interchangeable. There's an app store feature and the ability to add or remove apps from the TV which is useful for refining the choices to something more UK-centric.

Ok thanks for that. What about the Samsung smart HD 3D models? He likes this-
http://www.johnlewis.com/231648802/Product.aspx

Current production TV's with built in Freesat are becoming a endangered species apart from top Samsung and Pana models . You might be better off getting the TV that you want and feeding it via a separate Freesat receiver ?

As ingrad said, integrated freesat never really took off. Panasonic and Samsung both have models I think but most people prefer a freesat box that can do PVR and having multi-tuner.

plus its single input only ,

however the Panny will record to a USB hard drive if any use

freesat is a godsend to those who cant get freeview, and its 98 % coverage of the uk