My TV can connect, but is happy to live without. Though I've never used the smart features, just terrestrial digital TV, a PC over HDMI, a Pi running Kodi over HDMI, and an old DVD player via SCART. The TV doesn't enforce an interactive menu to pick those sources from, it is a simple selection on the remote, so it doesn't have anywhere to force ads.
If it becomes impossible to buy a TV that doesn't just display what I chose by the time this one is due for replacement, I'll take a device sold as a computer monitor instead. Or a projector. Maybe I'll pay extra, but I'll be fine with that.
