Outside of HN, people do want smart features, from what I can tell, and don't even consider that their TV is a privacy concern.
I don’t know anyone who uses the smart features in their TV, except my wifes parents who use the Netflix app in their Sony TV. Everyone else just use an AppleTV, ChromeCast or a box from their cabel/internet provider.
Because the current generation of TV buyers are used to the concept of purchasing separate hardware to deliver content. That is changing now.
I had a similar realization about streaming v piracy. 15 years ago everybody my age was pirating music and TV. It led to a lot of viruses and malware for some, but everybody more or less knew where to go to for that stuff, even as P2P networks were being shut down left and right.
Today, young people don't really do that. Spotify, YT and Netflix apparently fixed enough UX and content gap issues that torrents and stuff aren't considered necessary anymore.
The same will happen with TVs.
From the wal-mart website, it looks like the 55" Sceptre is dumb but the 65" is smart. When I bought my 65" tv earlier this year, I couldn't find a dumb tv that fit all of the specs I wanted so I compromised and got a vizio (simple, chromecast based smart tv) and just never connected it to wifi. It doesn't seem to nag me about the smart features or connecting it to the internet at all