> Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want what you want?

The problem is that I can’t have my preference: a TV that comes without (non-essential) software installed.

This means I have no choice but to deal with required updates — or at the very least, an annoying reminder that software updates are needed — for software I never wanted in the first place.

If the software was optional — could be uninstalled, or disabled so that updates weren’t required — then I would agree with you that having all TVs be smart TVs would be fine.

But not only is it not optional, it often comes with dark patterns of imposed privacy violations and/or unwanted ads.

The OP’s solution is to “jailbreak” it with a Linux install, which the average consumer doesn’t know how to do.

Again, is fine for hackers that want to tinker with things, but the whole point of the linked article is that many people are tired of smart TVs and the annoyances that come with them.

It's not necessary for a display to have an operating system.

They make fixed-function chips in factories every day that do stuff like convert video signals from one format to another (including formats that LCD panels can deal with).

Like the TFP401. For illustration, here is one on a board, ready to plug into an LCD panel and use for whatever: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2218

It doesn't run an OS. It's barely even programmable, and the programmability it does have relates only to configuring pre-defined hardware functions. It doesn't have an instruction set. It can't add 1+1.

But it can bridge the gap between a consumer device that produces video and a fairly bare LCD panel. It's a very much a single-tasker.

(Do any of the current crop of consumer-oriented televisions and computer monitors use this kind of simple pathway? Most assuredly not, which is the complaint that brought us here to begin with.

But these pathways exist anyway. It's completely possible to to create an entire video display and house it in a nice-looking package, put it in a retail box, and sell it on store shelves without involving an operating system. It's not a technological limitation.)

> and you would have to charge more

Non-commodity consumer products are rarely sold at cost but rather at whatever price the market will bear.

Rooting gets you additional means to reverse engineer the proprietary software system but doesn't automagically lighten the box.

It's all relative of course, maybe you view anything you can Ghidra as not-black-box. (though this is kind of tangential to rooting - for a many/most devices you can get a hold of the blobs to reverse engineer without rooting anything)

Modularity and separation of concerns can extend into other domains than software.

For me, it seems so much simpler to keep the two separate. You won't be forced to wash the heating element every time you wash the cup. Can't heat a different cup while the other is in the dishwasher, unless all your cups are self-heating. Normally, the only way for a cup to break is if it shatters, but with an inbuilt heater there's electronics that can break too. And should the cup shatter, now the heater is unusable too, or vice versa.

Most likely it will not be dishwasher safe.