> simply never gave it the wifi password and never connected it to ethernet

I worked on the team who built Samsung’s initial smart TV experience back in 2009 and yet I’m the exact same as you with every TV I own. If I could get the same quality panel and video processing without “smart TV” functionality for a reasonable price, I would, but they generally are much more expensive. My choice of panel is intended to last me 5 years, the last thing I would want is to be stuck with 5 year old “smart” tech that usually is abandonware shortly after purchase. It’s just to easy to buy a separate box (AppleTV in my case) and get a better experience and easy upgrade ability as new stuff comes out without wasting a perfectly good multi-thousand dollar panel.

Unless I win the lottery or something I don't see myself buying a 'professional' flat panel display that has zero smart features, and things like RS232/RS485 based control, as they are more than double the price... The same $1700 smart TV would be easily $3500+ as a professional/industrial display.

Surely there's a wire to snip or PCB trace to cut to disable IP-over-HDMI.

> simply never gave it the wifi password

That's been my strategy too, and so far, so good. We treat the TV as dumb. Getting a 75 inch screen that isn't a 'smart TV' is dang near impossible.

It's just a missing feature in your console, Ethernet over hdmi (hec) is a thing and who knows what you need to prevent this (hdmi firewall?)

Convert HDMI to SDI and back, but you'll need a HDMI-to-SDI converter that ignores HDCP (i.e. either pages of forms explaining how you've got a legitimate reason for doing it and an expensive converter, or a cheap Chinese one)

If it ignores HDCP, doesn't that prevent you from using it to play Netflix and Amazon Prime content?

Nope, it just strips the DRM. All of that work locking down devices, and it's trivially circumvented. Of course, desktop Linux is still not allowed to watch in high quality - that would compromise the DRM!

These devices pretend to pay attention to HDCP, tell the tranmitting device "oh yes I'm good", but then ignore it.

I'd rather expect they'll soon start putting cell chips inside of them for telemetry and ads, kind of like cars do nowadays.