This is a nice trite trope, but getting an affordable TV without these features might be nearly impossible for most people these days.
But he hates it because there's a million buttons and menus to navigate, when all he wants is to type in the channel numbers.
It even needed a firmware update out of the box and he didn't have a clue why a TV would need new software and immediately panicked and refused to use the thing until we drove 150 miles to accept the update for him
We just wanted a TV that receives terrestrial TV and has a couple of HDMI ports for his DVR which he knows how to use without over complex menus, is that so much to ask?
If you don't plug it into the internet it's not going to be a smart tv
It is not a question about affordable TV. The only ones that does not have smart features (as far as I can identify) are the cheapest LCD ones at the bottom of the price list.
The best alternatives that I can find is projectors or monitors, as those seems to so far not expect an Internet connection.
But you can forget about common TV features like HDR support, DTS/DD audio decoding, usable remotes and other useful features.
Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing with its sponsor.
So say the sponsor is Coke and it sees a 2 liter bottle of pepsi in your home. It displays something literally equivalent to (not in exactly so many words) "we are punishing you for bringing pepsi into our home, because our sponsor is coke." It then counts down a 30 second punishment timer. As a shopper you dont have THAT strong of a preference between coke and pepsi. So the next time you need to watch a movie on the dictator (name of TV set) you buy coke that night instead of pepsi.
Does that cross a line? How would you legislate against it? Devices shall not act as slave owners over humans who have bought them?
Well, um....
On what grounds would a punishment timer be illegal?
There was literally a Black Mirror episode about something very similar.
It is literally possible for a television to include a punishment timer (as in, it is pretty trivial to code up, if the device isn't rooted.) What happens if a company sells one that literally identifies shopping and uses a punishment timer for people who buy a competitor to their sponsor instead of their sponsor? can you make it illegal?
