I tried the smart tv, but then the app devs stopped updating the apps for that model or version of the OS. there's nothing wrong with the picture, but to be able to keep using apps would require a new tv. That's when I switched to devices connected to the TV, and stopped using the TV's apps. Devs will always update for devices like Roku, AppleTV, etc as there's enough users. I can only imagine the number of users for specific model of tv's OS will get smaller and no longer worth effort on the dev's time.

its a double edged sword, better hardware and experience = more expensive (see Sonys higher end stuff) 90% of would much rather drop the money on the less expensive BIG TV with a cpu that cant even transcode properly and harvests your data to offset the price. ive got a lot of family and friends that use my plex server and i pretty much force them to get a dedicated streaming device for it or warn them that unfortunately i cant help them if the content doesnt want to play.

Well, you say it's not particularly useful, but do you want a TV that runs like a bag of spanners or not?

Because if the answer is "not" then complaining about how your TV performs whilst stubbornly allowing it to download whatever updates it likes and stubbornly refusing to buy one additional device (like an Apple TV or a Firestick) to plug into it is kind of dumb, don't you think? Ornery even?

I agree that it is reasonable and fair to ask for a better experience but TV manufacturers have already made it abundantly clear, over the last decade and a half of smart TVs, that they don't give a damn what people like you and I think about how our TVs work, or that we get pissed off when they slow them down with bloatware and ads.

So the logical choice is to Not. Bloody. Let Them.

Literally, buy one other device - whatever suits your needs best (and they're all compact little things, not like the big ugly set top boxes of years gone by) - and your TV experience will immediately be significantly better.

Once you've set it up you won't even need two remotes: your Apple TV, or whatever, will turn the TV on and off for you, and control the volume, so you'll only need the remote for your it (or whatever device you've chosen).

The only time you'd need a second remote is if you have a cable or satellite box, or you're the kind of person who also has 7 games consoles of varying vintages and a bluray player plugged into your TV as well (which it doesn't sound like you have). We only watch on demand services so, if I weren't a fan of retrogames, we could get away with just the Apple TV and one remote. (The Bluray player barely sees any use, but I keep it around because we do still have some Blurays and DVDs for stuff that we really like and don't want to be beholden to streaming services for.)

(I should say, another alternative is to set up something like Pihole to filter the ads out, but that still doesn't help with crappy updates that slow your TV down. And if you use apps on your TV and don't keep them up to date, eventually they'll stop working, which isn't ideal either. Hence, again, back to the idea of a device to "drive" the TV, which runs the apps you want.)