I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
The general direction I agree with, the only part I can’t see is where the ‘only smart’ style of tv could ever take off fully. The notion of main room screen ever being an internet only thing would have to contend with a gaming industry that doesn’t build their consoles into tvs, or where personal content to view it on a big screen needs some kind of interface outside the network.
So long as that exists there should always be an option of simply not connecting the device to a network to avoid the issue. The only way I could see a forced to be online would be if their use started being treated as a licenced service that needed to confirm a subscription or such. Not that anyone should be giving them ideas, but it seems a stretch.
I can imagine a timeline in which TVs start requiring “updates” out of the box, refusing to display what’s on the HDMI input without a constant network connection for “security” or “quality of service” or some horseshit
Oh I’m sure that’d be tried, given the appitites of the major media orgs any way to move towards a payperview-per-viewer model would be fair game. My doubt for it’s viability woud be more that human resistance to it would end up the same way it always has for the media firms, trying to defy the will of a determined population of internet dwellers and fighting against reality. Someone would end up creating a widgit/app/script or hell even manufacturing an offline model to market to the glampers and cabin dwellers to circumvent the efforts. Cats and mice will forever keep at their games.