I wonder about this every time I see a smart TV-related thread on HN. I recently purchased an LG OLED (C5 48") because my old TV died so I'll finally comment. As others have said, just don't connect it to the internet. But you knew this already, so I'll provide my anecdote on the experience of this since I wondered the same thing for years before getting this TV.

When the TV is never connected to internet, and you use a single HDMI source like me, the TV acts completely like a dumb TV. It gets turned on via my AppleTV remote and displays the picture 1-2 seconds later. No LG logo (I disabled this), and no smart interface shown whatsoever.

If you want to change settings, you can display the settings interface via LG remote control and it generally acts like a dumb TV (not blocking the entire screen, so you can adjust picture quality and see the result as expected).

I've had the TV for about two months and never been asked to update it or shown any ad. The only time I've ever seen the smart fullscreen interface is when you unplug a live HDMI source and the TV detects that nothing is there. (If you turn the source off, it tells the TV to turn itself off as well.)

Hope this helps since it's a lot easier to buy a nice smart TV and do it this way than find a truly dumb commercial panel.

Many (most?) "smart" TVs will work fine if their network connection is never set up. Many of those can be set to wake on an HDMI signal from, for example, an outboard streamer box. That means you can take advantage of the subsidy paid by the bloatware that comes inside your TV, for a price that I bet is coincidentally close to the same as the price difference of an unsubsidized dumb TV.

Look for used 'Digital Signage' or 'Commercial' displays. They usually have dumb firmware and the same panels as retail models.

Dell has the P5525QC, a 4K 55 inch screen. Here in Denmark they sell it for 8846 DKK (~$1300 USD). I use a predecessor with my Apple TV and it works great.

Link: https://www.dell.com/da-dk/shop/dell-55-4k-sk%C3%A6rm-til-m%...

I wondered this as well when I was shopping for a new TV a few years ago. Unfortunately, not only is it really difficult to find a "dumb" modern TV, but the best display panels will always be on smart TVs because that's what sells.

That said, I ended up getting a Sony A95K 55" TV, and it's been great. It has Google TV built-in, but I immediately connected our Apple TV to it, and it's never seen the Internet since. No nags, either. Sony also made it really easy to disable motion interpolation, a feature I really dislike.

I bought a 60 inch Spectre tv from walmart and it works great as over the air and receiving video from my appletv.

I just googled “dumb tv” and that brand showed up.

Just use any TV but don't log into your WiFi or connect an Ethernet cable. It sounds like that won't work with these Vizio TVs, but they're likely junk anyway. This is what I do with my Sony and LG TVs in my house and they work fine as dumb displays attached to my AppleTV box.

I've said it before on HN, but I just want a somewhat trustworthy group to develop "DUMB" certification. I think enough people would pay extra for a certified DUMB TV for it to be worthwile. "Don't Upload My Bits"

I wonder if a "woot" style service could work. If 10K like-minded consumers made a group-buy every 2-3 years, a high-end panel vendor might be willing to provision a new SKU with a few firmware tweaks.

Skim through B&H and you'll find commercial displays but also various other display formats that are sufficiently stupid.

Somehow these dumb displays always seem to be cheaper than the smart ones. For some mysterious reason all the chips and stuff to needed run an OS have a negative cost.

I’ve been using my TCL Roku disconnected from the internet for 6 years

NEC/Sharp commercial displays are great. Even come with a daughter board you can throw a Raspberry Pi onto to run your own OS.