40 minutes in. Wild. I've got a Samsung TV we use like, 3 times a year to watch movies in the room with me. Lord only knows what its doing.

I'm loving what GN has slowly become. I hope they find a good balance between integrity and profitability.

""Could""

That hasn't been true for years. I'm sick of people pretending that it's somehow "natural" for TVs to be dumb, and blaming others for wanting their devices to do more for them and be more convenient. A TV that can run apps isn't the problem. A TV that can access the Internet isn't the problem. Even a TV that stays connected in standby mode is not inherently a problem. The problem is surveillance capitalism and that most of the world is unwilling to legislate and enforce proper consumer protections.

Sure, the article could've mentioned that not connecting your TV might(!) stop it. But framing it like this obvious and trivial solution that everyone can "just" do and saying that nobody should even want those features in the first place is just out of touch and borders on victim blaming.

Exactly; why would I need any smart features, when my computer is already running all the apps I would ever want to use on my TV?

You can't play any AAA games on a smart TV alone—and nobody wants to type with a remote control, hook up an antenna, or pay for cable/satellite anymore—so if you're going to own a TV you basically need to hook a computer up to it if you want to do anything useful with it.

And If you're a home theater geek, then all you need is a half decent GPU and you can still get all the fun features working like 144Hz, HDR, Dolby Vision/Atmos, etc. using a single HDMI cable. It's never been easier.