On 04 Sep 2015, Ewald Böhm wrote in
alt.home.repair:

Is this correct yet?

1. You hook up this "smart TV" to the power but to no other wires.

Not necessarily. If you have a TV feed from an antenna or cable
service, you hook that up, too. The "Smart" features are internet only,
so you need an internet connection to use them. You could hook that
part of the TV to your home router with a cable or wirelessly.

2. The WiFi connects to your router, so the TV is "on the net".

Yes.

3. The TV has built-in apps to get movies on Youtube, Hulu,
Netflix.

Yes.

4. Some TVs have a web browser - but they're so slow as
to be useless.

Well, mine is. It displays content slowly (I think that there isn't
much memory or storage in the TV for buffering, plus the browser itself
may be a Java app, which is inherently slow to start up) but the worst
thing about it is that you have to navigate using your TV remote. You
may be able to hook up a computer keyboard, which would help.

5. Some have a DirectTV (coax wired?) input in the back of the TV?

There's a coax input on mine, but I don't know anything about DirectTV.

6. Some TVs have built-in games.

Yes. There are "apps" included with the Smart TV software, analogous to
the apps on your smart phone. The apps on my Samsung TV can be updated
from them. You can purchase others, I think.

7. You can't *add* anything; it's all built in to the TV OS.

The OS and apps may be updateable from the manufacturer.

Is that the sum total of the advantages of WiFi on a TV?

There may be others. Actually, if I knew then what I know now, I'd get
a dumb TV and add one of those add-on boxes like Chromecast or whatever
to get the content I use. Most of the apps on my Samsung suck royally.
I only use a couple of them.