Possible,yes. Illegal? Yes.

So,sorry,unless you show me any proof that any device does it I consider it unlikely.

If you show me proof I am more than happy to call a few old contacts and raise a stink with ECC/CEPT. They don’t fuck around.

Absolutely - But with HDMI to a Kodi and all other connections disabled there is literally no way for it to get “out”.

How did the French fight against the US there? How did the French who literally just lost the war there (not without US pressure to not “extend” the war) let the US down there?

Kodi on a Raspberry!Easy to install, once set up it’s rock solid and you can integrate a lot of streaming and IPTV serviced these days.

Nope, not that easy. I can only speak for EU regulations (but at least my colleagues who did FCC were complaining that they were stricter) but they require to make it clear that the user needs to be made directly aware that the device emits radio waves, define which frequencies/techniques are used (so they can’t make you think they are using Bluetooth for the remote but in reality also have a NB-LTE card in the device) and the device must (and this is seen very strict) keep any radio emitting off when it’s configured to do so. (This brought Samsung,Sonos and Amazon and Xiaomi in trouble in regards to “airline” modes that didn’t really deactivate everything or devices that could self activate).

So yeah, they could surely build the TV in a way that it only works with WiFi/whatever turned on(basically any Alexa device works that way),once there is a (software) switch they cannot silently still transmit, even if you agreed to it in some obscure TOS- this would lead to a market ban. And they need to tell you which frequencies they use - so you can be aware of it.

This is just the radio frequency side of it - I am fairly sure that there is at least one EU country that requires users to be able to switch off each frequency band on it’s own (may also be in EU consumer regulation laws,but I come from MedTech, not my field)

It depends on your infrastructure,sure. But as long as no Amazon Devices are in the apartment/house and the WiFi/radio emitting function is permanently turned off (which, again,is a legal requirement per EU laws - and I am 90% sure per FCC as well) there is little chance of them meshing with something.

And if you have active Amazon devices in your home the smart TV is not your problem.

What exactly do you mean?

Sure. Choose one that still let’s you default connect to a HDMI input (or display port if you are really lucky) and connect a KODI box to it. Either a Raspi 4 or something similar will do.

That solves most of your problems as the smart part is on the Kodi Box and not on the TV and Kodi is (mostly) OS and can be configured to your liking.

As long as you deactivate the wireless LAN it shouldn’t be at risk doing that. From my understanding of US FCC and EU rules doing so despite manual deactivation of the “radio emiting technology” would lead to a market ban of the device (it has led to the EU banning other,mostly chinese, electronics in the past and Amazon was in hot water for a while).

The whole French thing is so goddamn funny, from an outside perspective - I mean, France is basically one of the few major countries the USA never fought a land or proxy war against - their only war was the Quasi war which was solely smaller naval battles and was clearly the US fault. And France was almost always willing to back the US…while the US let them down countless times.

Another reason I really look forward for them being sued in Europe - This is a highly illegal practice in the EU and has already brought sizeable penalties for various other media outlets, both conventional and online.

And weeks ago the Dutch and German consumer protection agencies as well as the GDPR ombudsman already commented that they are looking into Reddit (Reddit has it’s European office in Amsterdam).

That will be fun.

Germany currently has a whole political scandal because out of it.