I have a Sony Android TV from the 2015 generation.
It always had a row to advertise random app I don't use (Netflix, Playstation Video, Disney something etc...)
It also always advertise content from those platform, you have to disable "recommendations" from apps one after one as you can only disable recommendations for an app that pushed its crap at least once.
The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide.
My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.
What TV’s fall into the “dumb” category these days? I can’t go back from OLED and I don’t think anything at that price point will lack the “smart” features, unless it’s a commercial offering.
You can install it without an account, plug in an antenna and go to town. You can even connect it to wifi then use Youtube or Netflix. Haven't seen any funky ads.
My only peeve is that the controller doesn't have a full number pad which makes it a little derpy for the older generation.
I found this list of TVs that have ads or not[0], and the first item in the list with ads was a TCL Roku, accompanied with a screenshot of a Home Screen background ad[1]
My only annoyance with TCL is that once you connect it to the internet, and then disconnect it, the activity light (a quite bright, white light on mine) will flash constantly. Forever.
Solvable by tape, but doing that blocks the IR sensor.
I also went the tape route for that reason; haven't really noticed an issue with the IR sensor. Ended up configuring a firewall rule via OpenWRT that keeps it working on the LAN but not the WAN, so I can still use my phone as a remote with RoMote or the official app, and it's offline (still will blink though, hence the tape).
Nice thing about OpenWRT is being able to block homescreen ads when the TV is online with the adblock package since DNS filtering will do the trick fortunately.
You can take off the back plastic with a screw driver and disconnect the light if you want. Modern TVs are actually pretty modular. You can unhook the roku board, the t-con board, the speakers and multiple other things pretty easily. They are just wires with plastic clip connectors, a lot like a PC.
This is not a rationalization for garbage design, but at least it isn't as much of a black box as people might think.
The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide.
My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.