Instead of ‘splurging’ on a dumb tv bc they’re more expensive now thanks to the data sompanies sell off of smart tvs I was considering getting a smart tv and dumbing it down. Is the way to do this never connecting it to the internet? And is that the only way?
Yes. If you don’t connect it is pretty dumb and shouldn’t be able to send your data for harvesting. You sould research if you can set it to one of the outputs permanently then you can use some external device that you trust.