I have Two TCL ROKU Enabled Smart Tvs and I rather like them. It has only been two years but I essentially get the roku interface which I would have used anyway at no additional charge. Now admittedly Roku could go out of business or maybe there will be a media player that I like better than the Roku, but it has four hdmi ports that I could plug other devices into so it is futureproofed as much as any dumb tv is.

I agree. They are both bad choices and I would wish for an independent Yahoo over any combination. News corporation tries to stiffle thought with their deliberately dumbed down Infotainment masquerading as News, while MS tries to stifle innovation that would compete with their windows monopoly. In retrospect, I think the MS is the lesser of the two evils here since Gates is mostly greed motivated and not power or control oriented like Murdoch. Gates does not care what you think as long as you run windows, while Murdoch is potentially more sinister. Unfortunately, the number of White knights who can come up with $50B is pretty small. GE has MSNBC linkage. How about Disney with its ABC News franchise. Or Vivendi which would bring Canal Plus, and Universal studios into the mix. Has anyone talked to Vivendi?