> Not if it isn't connected to your network.

Not if it isn't connected to a network. But its hardly as if devices with manufacturer-paid cellular connectivity built in and preconfigured don't exist, so there's no reason that it has to be your network.

To the extent that manufacturers are either monetizing networked services or deriving useful data from them, making them independent of end-user networking choices has a pretty clear benefit, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a common thing in Smart TVs.

Valid point. But then you're left with a bunch of crap in the UI that is unnecessary and annoying at best.

Really? I'm not. My smart TV defaults to just displaying whatever the incoming signal tells it to.

And if some manufacturer decides to clutter things, I just won't buy it. Problem solved.

It's not too much of a stretch for smart TVs to start including cellular connectivity (and advertising it as "zero-setup").

And who will pay for that cellular connectivity?

This is getting well into ad absurdum (a common problem on HN). Smart TVs are perfectly fine for the person who doesn't want a smart TV. Just don't use any of the smart TV features and don't connect it to the network. Problem solved.

Nobody thought Amazon would put a cell phone antenna into an eBook reader, but look what happened! :)

That's exactly the example I was thinking of as precedent.