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Which works until TV manufacturers make their TVs wardrive and find a neighbor's wifi, or build cellular modems into 'em.

Then you open the back of the TV, find the WiFi antenna, and clip it or scratch it off the PCB. :-)

Heh, until they TV will be in an error state or something after you do this....

The solution will be someone building an upscale TV with no ads and no BS. TVs are just too cheap to not go down the adware path hardcore.

Exactly what I do and I love it. The AppleTV Plex app was a game changer.

This is my plan when I eventually don't have a choice and need to replace my TV. But I am also worried: we've gotten to a point where manufacturers ship products with a known backlog of bugs and plan to fix them with software updates.

There is usually a path to upgrade without internet access. You usually get the firmware from the manufacturer website, put it on a usb stick, plug it into the tv and it picks up the upgrade from there.

Enable WiFI, Update, disable WiFi.

(May have to change your WiFi password as well.)