[squarefoot]

Anyone knows of a list of hackable Smart TVs, ie those that can be safely reflashed with less intrusive or possibly open firmware in order to deactivate or better remove the load of advertising/spyware rubbish they're filled with? So far I've only found the Samygo project which however is restricted to TVs by Samsung.

https://forum.samygo.tv/

[xp84]

I’m no expert on all TVs, but I would question the desirability of this approach in the general case, because most TVs have a bargain basement SOC. I have a Sony TV with Google TV, and a ~$50ish (I paid even less) Chromecast With Google TV dongle (the new kind with a remote, not the strange old Chromecast that are captive to a phone for control). They have the same UI. The dongle can play SNES games on an emulator, even that is too CPU intensive for the TV. Not to mention the TV itself is frequently whining about low storage space too. I think smart TVs may be better off rendered inert, offline displays for better equipment you plug into them.