I buy the best tv that satisfies my needs. I will not handicap my viewing pleasure reading chicken little stories of the paranoid Internet.

I ran into issues with only the smart TV apps being able to provide certain formats like Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, etc.

Does anyone make TVs with Opera/Vewd (rythmes with lewd) anymore? That's what mine is running, and it supports Netflix and whatnot, but doesn't show ads or spy.

Also, Android TV boxes sometimes have shenanigans installed by the manufacturer, but they are easy to customize to only run what you want, and they run fine without a Google account.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to use an Apple TV box without linking it to an Apple account and letting them spy on you.

I shop for elite televisions at the “reuse” center, my latest score was a 2013 Panasonic plasma which is a perfectly good dumb TV hooked up to an XBOX ONE and a home theatre. Downstairs I have a big curved Samsung 4K attached to my big PC. Someday I’ll see the high end OLED that I crave.

If you have the room and price is no object you definitely want at least 5.1 theatre, both movies and TV programs sound great in 5.1. The next step up is a second subwoofer, even for music subwoofers take a load off your other speakers and reduce distortion.

The answer is really simple and this gets asked a lot.

Buy any TV, don't connect it to the Internet. Then connect the HDMI or DP to Apple TV and you're good to go.

As everyone is saying: just don't let it on the network. It's a little annoying because you can't have smart home stuff like "turn off the TV when I leave the house" working, but that's it.

My thing is, don't use an Apple TV. For the last 15 years or so I've just used a Mac Mini plugged into a big TV, and it's perfect. Get a wireless keyboard and trackpad and one of the many available trays that will hold them together. I'm literally typing this right now on this exact setup.

Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.

I have an LG OLED. It's gorgeous, but

- It's MAC address is blocked from the network

- It's never had WIFI credentials

- It's ONLY ever used with an Apple TV or PlayStation

Is this really more complicated than just never connecting it to wifi and then using a dedicated device like AppleTV only?

Connect any TV to a laptop/desktop computer... running Linux, of course.