I don't need the TV to be cheaper. I can afford to make up the difference for whatever few hundred dollars extra they would earn selling my data. But the expensive ones do this stuff, too.

So what you're saying is you're more valuable to advertisers . . . which means the amount you are worth to them grows with the amount you'd spend to avoid them.

Unless this stuff is made literally illegal they will keep doing it, because it's far more profitable than the alternatives. This is precisely why ideas like paying for a privacy respecting option on Facebook could never work.

I recently solved this problem by buying the Dell U5226KW. It has the same height as a 16:9 42" TV, but is 21:9, so a lot wider. It costs about four times as much as a similar sized 16:9 TV and you can't get it any bigger.