Given that it's easily possible to simply not use the "smart" features as you describe, what's the advantage to these manufactures spending extra money/resources maintaining the "dumb" SKUs? Wouldn't it be a better value for everyone involved to just make sure the "smart" features can be turned off?
If the smart features can be turned off, then they won't be able to force ads onto you [1,2], or spy on you [3]. They are antifeatures, taking control of your TV so they may extract more money from you, one way or another. Being able to turn them off would completely defeat that.
Although troubling, I don't think this is something for which smart TV technology itself is at fault. Plenty of smart TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable.
I agree, it's not the technology itself. I think it's due to the industry maturing and consolidating, and simply optimizing - they look for new avenues of profit, and they happened to have found user-hostile ones.
But be careful with "TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable" - 'profitable' won't stop them if adding ads means they could be more profitable.
