I've had a Panasonic tv for about 2 years with a dongle for wireless streaming, up to now I've never used the wireless for much, I thought you could connect up to almost anything but having this morning decided to try Netflix, it seemed a good idea to have it working on the TV.
But it doesn't look like I can do anything that's not on "viera"
Is that correct or am I missing something very simple?

The Tv is a TX-p42s30B with a Panasonic dy-wl10 if that helps.

Generally speaking (I am not familiar with what Panasonic do) each smart enabled device such as TV or smart bluray player, is limited to the built in apps that it ships with.....
My Sony bluray player is smart enabled, but a big sticker across the top panel tells me it supports the following,
BBC I player
YouTube video
Love film
Oriocity
Five

...and that's it.....it will never be able to use new online services and if any of the above get a massive upgrade, chances are the feature would stop working on my bluray. Prob is there is no way to upgrade the hardware etc.

Your heading says it all. Smart obviously has a different meaning when applied to TVs. It just means "a little less dumb"

You certainly don't get anything remotely approaching the abilities of a PC or even a Smartphone. If the manufacturer does not do an app for a particular feature then you are stuffed in most cases. And even if they have a web browser built in it is often limited in it's abilities. So even though you might not have a Netflix app the browser is probably incapable of streaming content from the Netflix website as an alternative.

This situation was was YouView was supposed to cure - give a universal IPTV interface across all products, but unfortunately they completely cocked it up (taking years too long to make their mind up) - so it was dropped, and became a couple of limited IPTV subscription services instead.

If you want a pc (with the flexibility that brings) on a TV, then you need a pc plugged into a TV.
A pc wireless keyboard with built in trackpad allows you to control the pc by remote.

Maybe given time we will end up with a micro pc on a card inside every TV, thus offering sufficient flexibility and speed. Isn't that what a raspberry pie is?

At the end of the day all we want is Youtube, BBC iPlayer and Netflix on our 'smart' TV's. Mine has the first two but not Netflix. I use my xbox for that

Best simple solution to getting Netflix on the tv then?
Buying a different dongle, plug ipad in somehow, or something else?

WDTV Live Streaming Media Player supports Netflix if that is of any interest to you...

The latest smart TVs (last couple of years or so) are pretty smart. Samsung and LG are the real smart TV powerhouses and may be Sony too who have experience through their PlayStation online services. The latest Samsung and LG sets have proper app stores and add new apps to them on a regular basis. They get updated too. Only Samsung seems to have ITV Player at the moment though. Some LG sets are Android powered so are in effect giant tablets.
http://gb.lgappstv.com/appspc/main/main/main.lge
http://www.samsung.com/levant/smarthub/#Apps

You obviously have a far lower expectation than the rest of us

'Hopefully' the Android ones will better meet expectations.

Probably! No, I just don't think they're quite as terrible as people are making out. Having said all that I've not been tempted to get one myself. I use set top boxes, games consoles and mobile devices for my smart TV tech.

Won't Chromecast do what you want?

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/c...es/chromecast/

The NOW TV box at £10 is a great device if you want to watch catchup TV. Some of the catchup services now feature live TV as well.

Smart TVs are a bit like the older TVs integrated with freeview. At first the freeview standard kept changing and you needed to keep updating software to keep pace. Unfortunately most manufacturers didn't bother and only updated new models as they were sold. So many tvs could not see all channels especially once HD came along, and were effectively obsolete. Eventually the freeview standard stabilised, and buying a freeview TV is standard

Same applies to SMART TV but perhaps worse as there is no real standard as such. Any Smart TV will only reflect the state of the art at time of purchase. I personally prefer to buy the best Dumb TV you can afford, and rely on NOW TV, Chromecast, android stick etc. to provide the intelligence. They are more future proof and cheaper to replace than TVs.

The manufacturers aren't daft and only offer a limited period of support for their smart devices - they then move on to the next release of their latest and greatest Smart TV and rinse and repeat.

If you want something that will do everything and be supported far better biting the bullet and getting a standalone product ...

I think there was a obsolescence plan all along. Turn the TV into (very limited) pc, and suddenly people need to buy a new TV every couple of years, rather than every 10 years. More profitable.

Separate technologies the best way to go.

Smart TVs are utterly crap (well those capabiliities are anyway).

Cant remember where it was now but this was an article recently on the tech sites, basically saying the same thing.

Solution, have a computer of some description. And a phone to control it. Spend a bit of time setting it up. Job done, no longer a hostage to the crappy apps found on Smart TVs.

Its a Wireless LAN Adapter.

Likely you have an early WIreless TV, not a Smart TV, though am sure a new super cheap dongle would fix that.

Buy a ROKU job done also will give you bbc iplayer, itv player, 4od, demand 5, nowtv and many more.

The current gen Panasonics (AS600 series up) have the full suite of catch-up services from BBC, ITV, C4 & C5.
One of the main issues we find with Smart TVs is the people coming to buy them! some how they have got it into their head that a Smart TV does everything a PC can & often take ages to understand that they don't. Once we show them what the TVs can do and how they do it, the customers are far more informed and able to make better buying decisions. Sadly something that is getting more & more endangered as on-line & supermarket sales increase.