Wouldn’t that only work if your neighbors tv was plugged into Ethernet so that the wifi chip can be free to start a hotspot? I can’t find any info about that so I’m not sure.

I still have a smart TV so I don’t need to have a non smart tv. But I refuse to use smart features for several reasons:

• The built in software is often laggy, ugly, and hard to navigate (mine is from like 2016 so all 3 of these are huge issues for my specific TV but my parents just bought a 2024 model oled and I find their gyro / touchpad / pointer remote to be excruciating to use)
• I hate the idea of getting used to the Samsung apps / os and then feeling like I need to stick with Samsung
• They never seem to support the software very long - my TV pre-dates Samsung’s current tv OS and no longer receives updates, so the Plex app available for it doesn’t even connect - so I couldn’t use it even if I wanted to

I mostly watch stuff downloaded to my Plex, so a PC running Plex htpc / desktop or any android box (Nvidia shield is pretty good) with the Plex or jellyfin app is all I need. I also like that I can easily watch YouTube through a browser with ad block and sponsorblock (I think smarttube does that for Android boxes like the shield)

I also game on the PC so I guess you could consider it a game console for the purposes of categorizing the use case.

The nice thing about Samsungs is that basically all their remotes work with all their TVs, so I just found one without the smart button so I can’t tell that mine is smart, and I obviously never connected it to internet. I think it’s a lot cheaper than trying to get a commercial dumb TV too.