Without internet there is no guide data for off-air TV even though it is not only part of the ATSC stream, Sony is decoding it. I know this because the pop up menu for the channel line has the name and time of the program being watched. That had to come off air if the internet is disabled.
Declining everything and setting up the TV as “basic” still has the underlying Google TV OS reaching out to the Play store, Android update, plus something in the Google IP block in China. Yes, China. And three net blocks from Microsoft.
Carefully selecting and permitting only the AWS Cloudfront net block will restore guide data, but it will cause the Google TV OS to howl loudly about no internet access. Allowing it to hit www.google.com shuts most of it up, but I will be poking at the OS to find out what needs to be shut off. Developer mode is available.
Sony is not using anything to report what the user is watching, network traffic is non-existent when viewing something on HDMI inputs.
This was not a cheap TV, Sony promised they would honor my requests not to be monetized, but my need for their guide data suggests otherwise (PSIP is not entirely broken, just slow). That doesn’t matter, Google is there to pick up the slack on the over the shoulder browsing.
It will be relegated to HDMI use only, just like the Samsung it replaced.