Not much of a solution since it will never happen. The best TV's are "smart", and people like nice things, myself included. You're much better of simply never connecting them to the internet. They get the same message and you don't limit yourself to a small set of poor options.
And if you never connect you're device the message they get is "the consumer wanted our TV, but not our software." What's hard to understand about that?
Nothing hard to understand about your logic. It is the underlying assumption that is flawed.
The makers are not tracking that statistic (number of units sold that were not connected to the internet). They don't care if you connect it to the internet or not. Anything that happens after the initial sale (beyond returns and warranty repairs) is simply irrelevant to them, because there is zero income stream (unless they are charging an 'upgrade fee' later for something).
They care only about that initial sale. The only feedback channel they listen to is "units sold".
But too many people are addicted to the upgrade cycle and as a result not enough will simply turn away and say "no thanks, I'll stick with my dumb TV" (or go hunt down those few dumb TV's that still exist, so the sales numbers shift to dumb TV's).
> The makers are not tracking that statistic (number of units sold that were not connected to the internet). They don't care if you connect it to the internet or not.
That is absolutely wrong. They are making money off of the data; of course they care! That's the whole point!
Not much of a solution since it will never happen. The best TV's are "smart", and people like nice things, myself included. You're much better of simply never connecting them to the internet. They get the same message and you don't limit yourself to a small set of poor options.