How would that help? You plug your AppleTV into a smart TV (to be able to use it) and the TV takes tracking snapshots anyway.

You don't connect your TV to the internet.

A report of a Samsung TV automatically connecting to a nearby unsecured network: https://web.archive.org/web/20210912135232/https://forum.dev...

Not as common as I thought though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350

We're linking to a random forum post as "proof?" If this was a widespread problem, we'd know it, but all we get is conspiracies which this is.

Kind of the opposite. I had heard of it happening, so looked for evidence, and found that HN post asking for evidence, with that random post seemingly the only bit supplied.

Shouldn't be hard to honeypot your TV into doing that - just set up a network and check if the TV connects to it, or set up sniffing at the gateway and see if there's any traffic that seems unaccounted for (as in not coming from your set-top box and suspiciously large for the periodic software update checks).

no obviously apparent tracking*

Do you have a source for the hidden tracking in Apple TV you’re referring to?

I don't have much hands-on experience of Apple TV's, but the internet is full of mentions of a "Limit Ad Tracking" option that defaults to off (more tracking).

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/limit-ad-tracking-on-roku-a...

apple's own privacy policy, have a fun read https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

Yeah TV is not something everyone wants to play around with. Not even nerds. Especially if you have a partner which just want to watch tv. You just want to relax and watch tv without any issues.