Can anyone confirm this? If this is true, this is huge news and highly consequential
This is why I purchase Vizio instead of other brands. I don't need my television loaded with a ton of apps I'll never use.
This avoided connecting it to wifi, but I still got what I wanted out of it.
They are not all the same --- even within the same manufacturer.
A lot of newer firmwares will launch into setup every time you power up if access is not configured. The TV configuration data is most likely being saved/retrieved from their cloud. This serves as their connectivity test.
Without wifi setup, my new Hisense 4k "budget" model does this *unless* you run it in "store" mode.
Dealing with setup on every power up is possible --- but obviously highly annoying over time --- and this is by design.
The manufacturers desperately want the data collection $. It's the only way some of them make money.