The problem is that ads and tracking data represent recurring revenue for the manufacturers, and they know full well that many people are going to Walmart or Be

The problem is that ads and tracking data represent recurring revenue for the manufacturers, and they know full well that many people are going to Walmart or Best Buy and picking the cheapest one. That changes the decision considerably: not many people feel strongly enough about this to pay more, and even people who do care about privacy or find ads annoying usually aren’t willing to pay much more for it. An Apple TV is the clear market leader on streaming devices but even there you see people talking like it’s exorbitant to pay an extra $50 for something which will last twice as long as a FireTV or Google TV, and for TVs it’s even less favorable because the people who care enough to buy our hypothetical safe TV are going to need one of those anyway so they’re probably going to pick the cheaper (advertiser subsidized) one and never connect it to the internet.