This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I guess it needs to be said again: “smart TVs” are cheap because of post-purchase monetization. That is: they gather your viewing and UI interaction behaviors (and, in some cases, ambient sound) for analysis and sale by the manufacturer.
The TV is a product, sure, but so are you when you use a “smart TV” like that without mitigating its connectivity by not letting it on your network and just using a discrete streaming peripheral of some sort instead.
Cheap? I must have missed that part.
Dude, do you remember how expensive a 65” 4k TV was when the technology debuted? Paying $1000 nowadays for what’s basically cutting-edge display tech is nothing - they were in the neighborhood of $10k or more when they were first produced. And you can get one with older tech from TCL or whatever for like $3-400 now, which is embarrassingly cheap for a 65” 4k.
