Apple TV is a bit pricey, but at least it’s ad-free. Connect it to a modern TV without internet access, stream your Jellyfin (or Plex) media via Infuse and you are good to go.
$130 menu price but regularly goes on sale for $99. Still not cheap (especially compared to the "free" ad platform built in to the TV) but lessens the sting a bit. And much less likely to be abandoned by its manufacturer and get exploited.
Even though those show up on their website, none of the 4K models are available on Amazon/Walmart or at best have very limited/erratic stock. I only see the 75” one in stock, and only on Walmart. Furthermore, they are just simply worse quality than a comparably priced smart TV. For the same price as their 55” 4K HDR TV you can get a TCL that’s also QLED and has local dimming, plus HDMI 2.1 and google TV do you can put it in a dumb mode anyways. So really there isn’t a great reason to get one of these.
I have no cable and my TV isn't hooked to anything except a Chromecast so I can stream to it. Can TVs send stuff out over Chromecast? I feel like it's no but?
HDMI does have a feature called Ethernet over HDMI that in theory could allow that.
Thing is though it’s literally never been implemented in anything. It died because cheap WiFi became common.
For it to work you’d need both the TV and Chromecast and HDMI cable all to support it. It’s not uncommon on cables and a surprising amount of them include it in features list (probably to trick low info people).
But I believe that’s a hardware design thing so not something even a software update could enable. It costs extra money and they’re already paying for a WiFi chip so why bother?
I'm not seeing any replies that are super helpful for your question - so here's what I do: throw a Linux desktop on a Raspberry Pi, or NUC and use the TV like monitor. Get a wireless keyboard/mouse combo and watch Plex through the appimage or just Firefox. Bonus, now any website that does video can be viewed on your big screen tv without dealing with any casting apps.
Ok so honestly I cut the cable years ago. There's a product called Tablo it's an OTA tuner & DVR pair this with a Roku and choose a streaming service for the extras you want and... For the love of God spend the money on a projector. For some reason projectors are missing all the advertising bullshit that's baked into modern tv's and please just game on a 32 inch 4-8k monitor instead of a TV something with a good response time instead of your laggy ass 40+inch TV.
This is the inevitable path for nearly all proprietary smart devices. There’s a handful of manufacturers that will see privacy as a marketable feature, but most won’t be able to resist the sweet taste of data.
It’s a shame there are no “dumb” TVs left, except for expensive industrial options.
The dumb ones last forever though.
My parents are still running the tv my aunt deemed too big in 2008ish, which she must’ve been owning for a few years at that point.
I have a google tv, and the “Basic Mode” when you set it up or the “Apps only mode” both are a lot better than the overstimulation nightmare that is most smart TVs (and a google TV with normal settings)