For now I'm comfortable using my appleTV but I like the fact that I can disconnect it at any time. I want a TV that will simply display whatever signal it receives without any connectivity required.
All I see of the LG interface during normal use is a small box in the top right corner that says "Apple TV" on boot and "Denon available" or something like that when the speaker systems has booted.
Also, the screen turns on quickly so there's practically no waiting for anything.
I was thinking of getting one of those in-store displays instead of a TV, but they don't usually have HDR.
A++++, would buy again!
But if you're willing to spend some extra $$, you can get a "meeting room display" with the same panel, but zero smart features and no speakers.
Meeting room displays you can buy from anyone, they're just basically really big monitors without any smart features. The only downside is that, they're a good 100-200% more expensive than the exact same panel with smart features =/
I've already got many NEC panels around the office and they're fantastic.
Though HDMI has evolved into a supper chatty protocol with information going both ways. HDMI doesn’t allow a TV to access the internet connection of a laptop or ps4 connected to it, right?
Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them. This doesn't give them any information other than the channel you have selected at any given moment (and whether the TV's actually on), but that's enough for ad tracking and viewership ratings, and that's usually all the network cares about.
(Note that I still find that whole feedback loop a bit uncomfortable; I won't ever have a cable subscription myself. But I have a hard time believing those cheap set top boxes are sophisticated enough to extract frame data from arbitrarily televisions over HEC; the compatibility issues alone would be a nightmare to code around.)
I believe they were worried about the reverse - the (isolated, wifi-disabled) Smart TV using ethernet-over-HDMI to phone home.
If you have a separate box for TV anyways, its perfect. Don't need anything else.
Otherwise, you can simply not connect your smart TV to the internet. Just leave it unconnected and use it as if it is a dumb TV.
Example - https://www.samsung.com/in/business/smart-signage/profession...
It doesn't end there; while I was looking for a monitor I found several models running Android! One can not be too careful these days.
That said, it is still possible to get a Dumb TV, say up to 55'. Larger devices are almost exclusively ~~spies~~ smart.
https://www.sencor.com/ultra-hd-televisions?smarttv=false
There is not a lot of options though. And getting a DumbTV larger than 55' is near-impossible.