I think you picked the extreme to make your point(Desktop PC in another room and long cable). I’m aware of all the BS that TV manufacturers pull with “smart TV” and chose to never ever let my TV connect to any home network. Instead, I had an old Mac mini laying around(from 2012 that is not up to snuff for main desktop, but is okay for a browser on TV to view Netflix, Apple TV, YouTube and basically anything accessible by a web browser). This is really not as complicated a setup as you were talking about before.. The Mac mini is just behind the TV, and is quiet.. a mini Bluetooth keyboard, and a mouse is all I need to have my own Internet TV.. using smart TV as a dumb display is the best.
Sure if you have old hardware capable of decent media playback it isn't a bad option but old hardware is quickly the limiting factor for higher quality media such as original HDR or Dolby Vision BluRay video streams.
Of course not everyone cares about that but if you're going to spend good money on a nice 4K HDR TV I suspect you want to actually be able to watch HDR content.
Yes, that part is true. I wanted to get a Sonos Beam Gen2 sound bar for my TV, and realised it support Dolby Atmos Audio. Now, I kinda want to buy the Apple TV 4K just for Dolby Audio support, and replace the Mac mini with it..
But, even for that, I personally would not let my TV connect to the Internet and ruin my teaching experiences with ads.
Like most things in engineer's life, tradeoffs and people choose to trade different things.....
