Once upon a time, you turned on a TV and it was just… on. If you watched an episode of “Seinfeld” the night before, you might've found your TV still tuned to NBC the following morning. There was no home screen between you and your shows, and if you were confronted with an advertisement, it was because NBC happened to be running a commercial at that moment.
I’ve been testing and reviewing TVs for over 12 years, and while I’m not that old, my memories of a time before smart TVs are starting to fade. I’ve watched my tiny living room ecosystem accumulate litter — like a bug in a jar with a leaf, stick and increasingly bigger piles of discarded candy wrappers. Worse, it seems like the folks in charge of the jar are watching my every move and selling off the data to a bug-squashing company.
