The pihole is nice, but isn’t a silver bullet. I have a roku tv, I hate it, but I think I hate it less then I would hate another smart tv like Samsung or LG. No cameras or built in microphone- although the remote does have a microphone, but I imagine it would kill the batteries quickly if it was listening when it’s not supposed to. Anyways, to add some context, the roku has ads too, the external roku devices do too. The fire sticks also have ads. I run a little hosts blocklist project [0] and recently had a interesting ticket about blocking the roku ads [1]. What it boiled down to is blocking a couple more domains and setting up your home firewall to prevent the TV from bypassing your pihole and talking directly with 8.8.8.8. Given DoH, who knows how long this option will be viable. I don’t watch TV, but my next big Entertainment purchase will probably be an Apple TV and I’ll remove the TV from the network completely. There are no open wifi connections in my area, so not too worried about it connecting to another network.

[0] https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/

[1] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/issues/230