We have a smart TV on the way. We do not plan to run the setup, it won't have Internet access. We plan to do what we've done for over a decade now, connect our Kubuntu laptop in the entertainment center to it and select it as the default input device. And occasionally watch OTA TV shows. So we will use it as ... a monitor and plain TV, that happens to have far better video and sound quality than our old TV.
that's the same conclusion I came to and the device I am developing is basically a Raspberry Pi with my own modified OS that has a casting canvas and it can show all kinds of content.
No third-party installs, ads and spywares!
Not sure what your homegrown solution is, but check out Plasma Bigscreen too.
it looks very interesting, thanks for pointing me to it.
My solution is a casting device like chromecast or apple tv which works without apps and cables. Now I am extending the device's canvas for personal use case without the concept of app stores. AI can control the canvas, show multimedia content, open any website/app, and show you options to log in by extracting context, then control it.
So I can tell it to open netflix, it shows login options on screen and once logged in, you can ask it to show catalog or play something by just talking to it.
It can connect and cast content to TWO external screens simultaneously, that I think is the most powerful feature.