Instead of ‘splurging’ on a dumb tv bc they’re more expensive now thanks to the data sompanies sell off of smart tvs I was considering getting a smart tv and dumbing it down. Is the way to do this never connecting it to the internet? And is that the only way?
If you’re already using an Android phone with Play Store on it, the additional exposure through the Chromecast is probably not significant. Otherwise, in addition to the other suggestions, you could grab an Android capable board from HardKernel for example and run plain Android TV on it. For example the ODROID-C4. It’s got nearly identical hardware to the CCwGTV. The setup is obviously more elaborate.