Is there any device you might connect your TV to that actually provides Ethernet over HDMI (at all? unprompted?)? People keep citing that ability, but I can't remember ever actually encountering devices that do it.

Even if this actually becomes widespread (indeed I am not aware of any consumer device providing pass-through network access through its HDMI port), I'd expect most devices to have a toggle for this or a privacy-friendly company like Apple might even make the lack of that "feature" a selling point.

The world is a sad place, the fact that we have to pay a premium so we don't get features.

We need companies to rise up against this bullshit. It won't matter until the customer base is educated in privacy.

We need a massive campaign to spread privacy awareness. Only then, there could be a market. Apple can afford to do this because they're big and they already have a customer base. A mid-sized company trying to sell privacy oriented products in a mass market is going to be left in the dust.

The society continues to regress. No one cares.

There is a difference between it having a network connection (i.e. ethernet) and having internet connectivity - you just need to be able to control the tv's traffic.

If the manufacturers start adding a 4G modem to their devices then that might change things. Hopefully the economics of that never work out.

I never found a device that supports HDMI Ethernet Channel. I'm really curious whether any device exists.

Perhaps there will a market for HDMI “condoms”.

Just block it in your router. Everything has to go through it eventually.

..but then, just like some smart home devices, it would either constantly annoy you with an icon or popus about "missing internet connection" or outright refuse to work at all with a cryptic "something went wrong"

You can always hook up a computer and use the TV as a monitor.

How do you know they aren't tracking that either? Your TV has a computer inside that has the capability of watching whatever is being displayed on your screen.

TCL Roku models will do this. They have some kind of content matching running on the display signal.

Thankfully they let you disable it. But mine has the internet connection disabled entirely anyway.

If you have a computer hooked up, you don't need the TV to have internet.