Thought that was Hisense… Could be both actually.

Wouldn’t that only work if your neighbors tv was plugged into Ethernet so that the wifi chip can be free to start a hotspot? I can’t find any info about that so I’m not sure.

I still have a smart TV so I don’t need to have a non smart tv. But I refuse to use smart features for several reasons:

• The built in software is often laggy, ugly, and hard to navigate (mine is from like 2016 so all 3 of these are huge issues for my specific TV but my parents just bought a 2024 model oled and I find their gyro / touchpad / pointer remote to be excruciating to use)
• I hate the idea of getting used to the Samsung apps / os and then feeling like I need to stick with Samsung
• They never seem to support the software very long - my TV pre-dates Samsung’s current tv OS and no longer receives updates, so the Plex app available for it doesn’t even connect - so I couldn’t use it even if I wanted to

I mostly watch stuff downloaded to my Plex, so a PC running Plex htpc / desktop or any android box (Nvidia shield is pretty good) with the Plex or jellyfin app is all I need. I also like that I can easily watch YouTube through a browser with ad block and sponsorblock (I think smarttube does that for Android boxes like the shield)

I also game on the PC so I guess you could consider it a game console for the purposes of categorizing the use case.

Smart TVs are literally designed to spy on you, so that’s pretty shit. The software is shit, there are ads in thousand dollar TVs. It doesn’t need its own Netflix app that lags to fuck, or a YouTube app that is far worse than just using a computer.

A media center for watching TV (currently an Nvidia Shield with Kodi) and various games consoles are literally all I’ve used a TV for in the past 20 years.

Not who you asked but I hook up mine to a PC meant for streaming, there’s no need for it to be smart with either browser or applications that stream the content. Unless I’m missing something.

It’s not a need as much as a preference to not want every device need a connection if you have other means to handle the tasks. Also less bandwidth used since they don’t send back random data to headquarters, not that I imagine it’s a lot.

On top of what everyone else said: they’ll inevitably stop being supported before long and it’s always easier to plug something new in the HDMI.