Neither do I, but what about YouTube? Not letting your TV manufacturer sell your watching habits is already a big win, and on macOS you can further block telemetry. A big chunk of my YouTube consumption happens through yt-dlp using a VPN provider that presumably does not cooperate with Google.

What do you use for a remote for the Mac Mini?

I have a Lenovo used minipc connected to mine and I just use a Logitech K400+, it runs Linux with KDE. I will never need a smart tv, or want one, for that matter.

I get that people would rather have a remote but I personally actually don't like remotes at all. My TV is basically a screen only.

Yeah the problem with a keyboard and trackpad is you need the lights on.

I do not, but I get what you mean :)

Not the parent but my family also has a mac mini to offline TV setup - just a small bluetooth keyboard/mouse and the tv remote for volume. Works well.

As far as I know there are no remotes that work with MacOS.

Sadly, there's just a keyboard + trackpad sitting on my TV-audio console (a kind of home made speaker credenza I built years ago).

So no remote. I get up, hit the spacebar to pause/play. The audio is into a multi-channel receiver though so audio has mute/volume controls on a remote.