I'm tired of these "anti smart device" articles. Here's the harsh truth: most people don't care or appreciate Netflix/Disney/whatever being built in. Alternatives exist if you're so inclined.
Commercial signage displays were a little late to the "smart" revolution (basic RS-232 management notwithstanding), but they absolutely got there. There are simply too many advantages to being able to run an "app" to semi-autonomously display your ad/info campaign without running HDMI cables and splitters/switches everywhere (maybe even by polling a server over Wi-Fi).
I don't think you're mistaken about the big-picture situation, but if you want to focus on models with a bit less "TV DNA" in them, it might be interesting to browse through [1].
At a glance, those prices are straight-up horrible in comparison to a consumer model. How much revenue is the Smart-we-upload-everything consumer model generating? I would have thought tens-of-dollars at most.
My non-expert impression is that it's mostly a matter of consumer-oriented product lines facing more competitive pressure on price than business-oriented product lines. To put it another way, the consumer product lines don't have ads and spyware because those make a lot of money, but because vendors need to fight tooth-and-claw for every dollar of margin in that market.
When you have less than a handful of companies creating the products there is no effective competitive pressure.
They control future supply which raises or lowers the price at their whim. The feature-set needed to get money from spyware is not mutually exclusive. Its a value, no-cost added to improve profit.
That's all the business people see, and Accurint is more than happy to pay with those government funds to enable historic lookups of your behavior in your private home sans court.
