Y'all should really start naming manufacturers and models so I can avoid them.

Here

LG ads: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/3/10/22323790/lg-oled-tv-...

Samsung connecting to open WiFi: https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/if-you-choose-to-not-c...

Samsung TV ads (you’ll find more sources, but adweek seemed a pretty ironic choice): https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/samsung-ads-debuts-thre...

Samsung, LG, Sony & others spying on what you watch: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/smarter-living/how-to-sto...

Quite a lot to avoid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It rhymes with “ram tongue”

I am not surprised. Samsung are well known for bundling a load of crapware on Android phones to the point where every review of lightly themed Android phones screams "clean, stock interface".

why are you not just saying "Samsung"?

I haven't had a TV in years, but if I had to get a large display for some reason I'd go for a dedicated large monitor + a set top box or some media centre appliance to actually play the media/tune in to TV. You pay a lot more (I was looking at a Dell 55" monitor for around $5k AUD, where an equivalent size TV is $1K from a name brand manufacturer), but IMHO it's worth it.

Or maybe skip straight to an LED projector, I hear those are nice.

Look into digital signage displays. They're just big dumb monitors, but tend to be cheaper than similarly-sized displays that are marketed as monitors.

Just glancing at Amazon, I see a 65-inch 4k digital signage display for under $1200 USD.

I always wanted to experiment with one of these but fortunately I managed to avoid them so far.

I wonder what would happen if you limited their bandwidth to a couple of kbps. Just enough to get the pings across but make any ad download excruciatingly slow. Or write some kind of DPI rule that drops packets to the internet above a certain size.

People apparently mostly rely on PiHole & other similar options for that.

Blocking outright is probably an edge case these devices will detect and handle differently in the following years as more and more people will be aware of the option.

That's why I think experimenting with more advanced sabotage will pay off in the long run.

Well, we always could simply open them up and remove the WiFi antenna. Unless it’s deeply integrated in some chip or another.