> I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV

I think we've overshot the mark a bit about TVs' connection abilities. A built-in SIM was one early conjecture. And while it hasn't been seen in the wild, it is often assumed to exist.

More to your point, we've not seen connections (assumedly ad-hoc wifi) to a neighboring device and uploading data to manufacturer, partner, etc.

We have recently seen a case of data collection, that included wifi scans. What we have not seen is a device that connects to other APs on it's own.

I saw 1 redditor claim that this occurred but it was not substantiated. Lots of folks are looking for this behavior but it hasn't been found.

This tells me that our existing methods of self-protection are effective.