The most insane thing which I wouldn't believe if I hadn't experienced it myself, but Samsung will periodically just install random apps and games on your phone. You delete them, then a month later, new apps show up. It's one of the most aggressive anti-consumer thing I've seen and it's coming from such a large player.

I'd guess it's happening during silent updates to your android OS. Those can come packaged with anything Samsung wants. I had a similar fight lately with HP's printer software which insists on waking your computer up for a printer health check and reenables the scheduled task randomly even without updates. Finally excised it from my PC.

The frustrating thing is the lack of options. If you buy a $300 TV or a $3000 TV it will still come loaded with bloat/ad/spyware built in.

I'd pay $3000 for a 85" OLED panel that doesn't have anything except an on/off button and a HDMI 2.1 port.

(Yes, and options to adjust the image a bit, but I'll turn on "filmmaker mode" anyway, so even those can be cropped by 90% vs regular TVs)

We just bought a vizio to replace one that broke. Once you skip the setup process, all you need to do is remove the solder from the 'home' button on the remote or whatever it is and you'll never see their pop up crap again.

I get why people like this, though. It takes all of your accounts and puts them in one place. Honestly, if I could run Plex and my own media through it, it would be tempting to just block it from dialing out and get rid of my Nvidia shield.

I have a chromecast with google tv plugged into mine. Not sure what it's called these days. Chromecast Home?

It comes with a super minimalist remote that does volume and a d-pad and on/off and a remappable netflix button. My tv's original remote is... Somewhere. It's been more than a year since I've needed it.

Both the chromecast and my xbox uses hdmi-cec to instruct the tv to "switch your input to me". The chromecast remote controls the tv volume directly.

I have an Emby media server on the network, and I use the emby app on the chromecast to play content. I'm also a sellout so we have the standard streaming apps on there as well.

It's a truly god-tier setup and it works so well.

Yeah, the current Chromecast on an HDMI port is far superior than anything the TV vendors offer. I think you pretty much get access to every service you might want except Apple TV (no surprise, Apple gonna Apple).

Apple tv is available on my chromecast?

Yeah there's an appletv android app.

That's my main setup too. Sometimes still need to main TV remote but not often.