[davesmylie]

I would consider not using a "smart tv" at all.

I have had an old PC running my TV for many years now - it's fast, so doesn't get bogged down rendering applications, I can play any content that I have using full resolution, and as it's just a PC, ublock origin takes care of any ads.

Depressingly I found it quite hard to replace my truly dumb, 55" Veon a few years back, so I've had to buy a TV with some smarts (a HiSense) - however, it's still just being used as a dumb tv (ie, an HDMI input).

I do have mild concerns about updates introducing some unwanted behavior despite this, so it's either not connected to the net, or, if I'm playing around with trying to manage it via HA, it's blocked from leaving the LAN at the router.

[amy214]

The main thing is to make sure it has no way to access the internet. Just USING it as a dumb TV isn't enough because these things - this TV firmware - it takes snapshots of whatever is playing (even in dumb mode) and utilizes whatever fingerprinting tech on that data - https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/your-smart-tv-watching-what-you...