To be honest, if it was just "hey, here's this show on Netflix!" or "Try this new streaming platform!" type ads, I could deal. I've never had too much trouble

To be honest, if it was just "hey, here's this show on Netflix!" or "Try this new streaming platform!" type ads, I could deal. I've never had too much trouble disabling this sort of thing on my Sony TV. The thing that always worries me is that it's essentially a low end smartphone with a really sweet screen. I still don't know what will happen if the OS/firmware ever gets borked. Will it just fail over to the last input I used, essentially rendering it a monitor? (not the worst thing that could happen) Or will it just boot up to some error screen and become useless because the "smarts" broke and now I can't use a perfectly good display anymore? I know a lot of people prefer the ease and convenience, and that's why they sell so well. But I'd always prefer to have the display be the display, and then use whatever box or dongle or PC I choose to provide the content. Those can be swapped and upgraded. The 2014-era smartphone SoC built into the TV can't.