Did the TCL not have this option?
That's not me for sure. :) But what I'm sure about it that their TVs are made either by Haier or TCL.
F--- Google, but at least the kids know those menus are bullshit, and do not have the wifi password at any rate.
Also, we're probably already to the point where I could just put it on a firewalled network, and have a [chinese open weight] LLM pop the factory android, get root, and reprogram the remote buttons to no-ops.
Or, I could open the remote up, physically cut out the spam buttons, then 3d print an alternative top-half of the shell without holes for them.
So many options, so much enshitification.
We bought it because it has crazy high brightness (it is in a bright room with direct sunlight hitting the panel while we are watching it), and while it can beat back the sun, it cannot do so by just turning all the zones on 100% because it would melt or something.
So, if all the image slopping were turned off, the contrast ratio would drop 100x, and the TV wouldn't really be fit for purpose.
(For when the sun is not actively trying to kill the panel, I have a de-slop shortcut setup. That also has the backlight enhance stuff turned on -- as low as possible -- to get true black on the LCD. It works OK. OLED is not quite there yet for this corner case.)
> the image enhancements.
Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.
In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).
With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.
Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.
Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.
The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.
Of course a modern console only managing 30fps is the actual 'bug' :-). But I agree that's one of the narrow exception cases where an 'enhancement' might be a net benefit. Although if you're going to use synthetic frames, doing it in the console can be better because intra-frame motion hinting might be available and, even if it's not, the console's frame gen is trained on game content where a TV's chip is cross-function and far less capable (both in look-ahead and motion vector count). But I know some consoles don't have frame gen, so in that case it's a win.