Calling names without understanding what’s actually going on is always a great start.

"Smart" seems to just mean internet connected. Basically all TV watching (at least in my experience) has moved to streaming, so you need a connection somewhere. Either TVs have it built in (and show you ads in the output selection menu – I’ve seen this) or you connect something else to it that streams content. The Fire TV stick was a cheap way to do this, Fire TVs are cheap TVs.

I’ve been using an Apple TV and capped the wifi connection of my TV, works great and no ads.