You can still buy new dumb appliances in 2026.

I've seen this claim on and off. I had trouble finding any in the wild the last time I went TV shopping. The handful of "dumb" models I have found (Emerson still has models with built in DVD players, ffs!) tend to be on the smaller side and poorer quality. I've got a living room that would kinda dwarf a 40" set. Shy of going to a projector system (which... eh, mounting those things can be a real pain and all the new ones are also riddled with AI) I was stuck with different flavors of "Smart" TV for anything 60"+

Ended up just wiring my computer to the HDMI and using the PC/web browser as my primary interface for watching anything. That's side-skirted a lot of the AI annoyances. But it's not perfect.