The problem is any TV is smart-free if you don’t give it the WiFi password (as article points out), so I’m not sure why’d I pay more for something that would be harder to sell second hand later on?
Personally my TV is offline with an AppleTV for streaming.
Modern Samsung TVs don’t even let you change any settings if you don’t provide Internet access and accept the TOS. Only thing possible is changing channels and volume.
(Yes, that restriction includes changing the HDMI source for your Apple TV. Simply not possible without.)
> I use a game console for streaming. Works great.
I strongly suspect most game consoles are spying on you just as much as a smart TV would and all of them currently seem to be pushing ads in your face pretty aggressively too. Still probably better than roku which records and sends home multiple screenshots of whatever you're watching every second, but if my PS5 isn't doing some form of ACR already I suspect it's only a matter of time.
The firmware in TV's can and often do get updated, and smart TVs are increasingly capable of updates and upgrades, but you're right in that now that consoles are basically locked down gaming PCs there's still really no comparison.
I did some minor ps3 hacking a decade or so back, and dumped the network activity. Every boot it would send some XMPP traffic containing a log of your recent activities back to Sony. What you watched over Dlna, what dvds/Bly-rays you played, which games, for how long and when.
I imagine things have only got more detailed since then in newer consoles.
Personally my TV is offline with an AppleTV for streaming.