Didn’t really state a position other than ownership, which does have some implications. I am fine with smart TVs but not ok with data collection and ads.

Either would only be ok if I had opted in, especially be paying a lower price with that tradeoff, but I and everyone else are paying full price, so I am adamantly opposed to it.

You took it a step further than me, and I applaud your efforts. I hope they are noted by the manufacturers.

I have recent LG TVs. They did start showing ads, but if you dig around in the menus you can disable them.

Not addressing your main points. Just wanted to point out you can have a smart home with purely local devices. No cloud.

Airvpn, then use their advanced config to create a 443 tcp tunnel out to a single server. Then use that server’s IP in your OpenVPN config file. Route all traffic including dns inside the tunnel.

Traffic will look like all other web traffic - encrypted on standard web ports. You won’t even need to do a DNS lookup to start with and airvpn uses generic rDNS so it’s not super easy to figure out from their perspective.

Been using them for many years and several instances I leave permanently connected. I can’t recall a single instance of AirVPN disconnecting from their side.

Try AirVPN. They allow port forwarding and have fairly extensive configuration options.