I finally looked in the settings and found I can set my roku tv to not start in the smart menu and it is immediately better for me.

I have some practical annoyances, most surrounding multiple remotes and the clunkiness of it. I have two TVs in my house: a Samsung smart TV from 2019 and a Hisense Google TV I purchased earlier this year. The Google interface is not the most responsive, but it packs in all of the stuff I would want. Android is the most supported platform for apps. Samsung's OS has good app support, but open source projects and more niche apps aren't there. I think there is a nebula app now, but for a while there wasn't, for instance. So, I bought one of the Chromecast with Google TV sticks to bridge the gap. It works well most of the time, but unlike the Hisense, it doesn't support airplay. So if someone airplays, you get kicked back to the native OS and have to use the native remote. It's possible to configure the Chromecast to use the native remote, except the home button doesn't map, it is the home menu for the native OS. So it's just kinda clunky. I do think newer Google tvs with airplay built in (varies by brand) are going in the right direction here. If you're concerned about privacy, they're still gonna be a nightmare though.

Don't connect it to the network. Sadly best you can do.

I'm really happy that I got to skip the whole smart TV stuff by being a projector guy. They are still dumb as rocks for the most part.

My HTPC is an Odroid, so all is well in that department as well.

I'm still rocking the original Shield TV that I got in 2017. It's still as new. They added ads to the UI a while back now, but I just installed a custom launcher. Works great.

I use a 32" 60Hz monitor That's the way to go Level One Techs covered this due to those same reasons Wendel's mom's Smart TV ran out of storage for the OS Updates and some apps upgraded beyond working on the old OS It's like cell phones So, I went with a large cheap monitor on sale and stream from my PC or Roku stick It's basically built-in obsolescence

I was never so glad I'd bought a normal telly as the week I spent in a rental with a "smart" one.

I'm looking to buy a new TV soon ish and I'm really afraid of ending up with something with a ton of pre installed bloatware, simply because that's the industry standard nowadays. If anyone has any tips for "dumb" TVs in the ~€600/$650 price range I'd love to hear them. I have a chromecast for streaming and it works fine, so I'm really just looking to buy a large screen without bloatware, no Internet connection required, etc. That's what my current ~10 year old TV does and tbh I just want the same thing but better picture quality.

Look at commercial TVs, those used by businesses. Some even come with a RPi slot.

I run a DNS server on a raspberry pi and block only those domains where LG gets ads and promoted content from. I can then have a clean and responsive interface while services like Netflix still work.

I don't think I'll ever need anything like a streaming box or whatever. I'm fine with the computer monitor I have right now, which is a bit wider then an early 2000's CRT. Anything I stream is done through Firefox with NoScript and Origin to block the bullshit. I'm not entirely sure why anyone uses streaming boxes and whatnot when you can just do the same thing, but safer and cheaper on a desktop. Maybe so you can more easily watch stuff with people in the same room? Find a use for that couch? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Still using a 14 year old Panasonic plasma TV in the living room and I dread the day that I have to replace it.

My Samsung Tv from 2013 appreciates this post.

I unfortunately am using a firetv 2nd gen with it and it's horrendous. I also use a xiomi mi stick,which is also horrendous (shitty hardware).

I want dumb but good panels,no smart features please. Does anything like this even exist anymore?

So buying a smart TV and connecting it with streaming box/stick for accessing streaming services does seem to be the best solution.

It’s all about supply and demand, and the customers have demanded smarter TVs. In this way capitalism drives innovation. Who knows, a couple years from now TVs will likely be twice or three times as smart as they are now!

I use pi-hole to block tracking.