Glad I kept my 10+ year old TiVo equipment around. Sounds like time to switch back to “old school” cable tv.

I bought a "tiny PC", installed Kubuntu on it, bought a USB remote control and used KDE's insane configurability to set it up to look and feel like a TV OS in order to turn my "smart" TV into a "dumb" one. One where I can watch YouTube in a full-screened web browser with an ad blocker installed.

A potential alternative for those with AndroidTV devices is sideloading SmartTubeNext[0].

I've been using it on my nVidia Shield for a while now. No ads, a lot of UI customisation, and Sponsorblock is integrated as well.

[0] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext