Hotel TVs, same panels as consumer models with different supporting hardware and stock calibrations. These are actually dimmer than the consumer models to increase panel longevity.
They tend to lack gaming features like high/variable refresh rate but they're more functional as normal TVs than digital signage displays.
They have similar OSes as the consumer models and can run the same apps but don't have ads unless the operator wants them to and can be centrally managed, support internal IPTV networks, etc.
(I don't care about integrated speakers though)
If you're a videophile you might care. Most people would not notice.
I think what changed was the realisation that even with 4k hardware in theory, what you're actually seeing is so variable based on bandwidth and different services' support for different shows you basically don't know anyway and thus it doesn't really make much sense to care about it.
Besides which, you realise that things that are made to be more enjoyable on 4k, like where that would actually make a difference to how good it is, are probably not that much worth watching anyway outside of demos. Certainly it's not, for example, a factor on which you want to be choosing what series to watch.
And how will my 50 year old mom and 70 year old grandpa know how to do that? "Hey Claude scan the wifi for a LG TV, hack it, root it and give me the keys to install what I want, then lock out LG from access it?"
As always, the sane fix is in government legislation and enforcement of privacy regulations. But this isn't happening since knowledge of smart device spyware across politicians and the voting population is small and governments want to use that data dragnet that smart devices enable for their own means.
Well, why not?
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
I don't think that the cost of TVs has gone down when they added spyware and ads.
You could say that that's the cost of turning less profits, rather, and I suspect that TV manufacturers keep the costs of normal displays high just to discourage their purchase by normal people.