Smart consumers of this flavor are a minority but they exist. People who care can already bypass the "smart" features of mainstream TVs, thereby enjoying low prices and negating the privacy risks. Or they can pair a large computer monitor and separate audio system that never had smart features to begin with. To make the business work you need smart consumers who are privacy-conscious and are willing to pay more for it instead of doing a little more work on their own.

I think if you went in a Framework direction (opensource, high quality hardware, techie oriented, etc.) you would be able to make it work for a small high end market, particularly if you aimed it having a great "pc-connected" experience.

It is a bet on two things:

1. the enshitification of smart devices would continue progressing and, at some point, our product would just be better and enough reason to migrate 2. a single, catastrophic privacy event would change the public perception on the importance of privacy and trusting your own devices, which would change the value perception of dumb appliances

Any one of those two would suffice to make the business viable, in my opinion.