It should be the future, but it won't be. Roku's ARPU (average revenue per user) is around $40/year. If a company sells you a TV and there's a 50% chance you end up using the built-in smart platform and you keep the TV an average of 7 years, that could be an extra $140 for them. If the TV is selling for $300, that's an enormous amount of extra revenue.

You might say that high-end TVs shouldn't come with ads, but the kind of person who buys a $1,000 TV is the most valuable kind of person to advertise to - rich, or at least willing to part with their money for high-ticket items. ARPU over 7 years might be $140 for all TVs, but the revenue from premium-TV buyers might be double or triple that.

Would you be willing to pay an extra $140 for a TV? I'd guess yes - we're in this thread because we're more likely to. But most people probably wouldn't. And when it comes down to it, are we going to pay the extra $140 or just hope that we can disconnect it from WiFi and it's almost the same difference?

That's the future I chose about a decade ago and I'm as happy as a clam. The technical reality of my future is an oldish computer hooked up to a projector with some wireless keyboards and mice that bounce around to control it and the ability to steam stream onto it if I want to use it for gaming.

It'd be nice if there was an actual competitive market for those sweet high res OLED screens without all the software and firmware junk - just give me a display-port/whatever and let me do my own thing. I've encountered newer brands of smart TVs in airbnbs and the like and one thing I have zero patience for is a TV that needs time to boot up. It's a display device I should push button and it should be on before my brain realizes the button was pushed.

That was ~2007-2017. You are literally describing how TVs worked in the past. Still one of their core functionality.

but think of the products! Dont you want ads?? You havent thought of the corporations poor bottom line at all :(