As I understand how those TV's are built, this is not true.
They are definitely running on the same _chip_, but you're right that (some of) those operations are not running on the generic ARM CPU cores. There is dedicated silicon for some of those fore sure, but it's all part of the same SoC.
Take a look at something like MediaTek Pentonic 1000: the product page talks about the included CPU and GPU ARM cores, but that SoC is responsible for _so much_. It dictates how many inputs your TV can have, it contains all the media-decoding blocks (AIUI, including things like ATSC!), and _it_ handles Dolby Vision, ALLM, and half of the niceties of modern high-end TVs.
So for everyone that doesn't have enough engineering bandwidth/competency/money to build their own silicon for things like this (which includes, oh, say, Sony.), and if you're buying off the shelf, you're getting those cores!
Thats actually an interesting angle. Sure, the low-margin price pressure has lead to increased consolidation and saving a few cents by having one chip instead of two - unremarkable. But that this exerts a kind of pressure to use the hardware that you got anyway is not immediately obvious, but probably true. Why let it go to waste? Why not collecting a bit of data here and there? Show a few ads, where they are not that annoying, really, who would mind.
They are definitely running on the same _chip_, but you're right that (some of) those operations are not running on the generic ARM CPU cores. There is dedicated silicon for some of those fore sure, but it's all part of the same SoC.
Take a look at something like MediaTek Pentonic 1000: the product page talks about the included CPU and GPU ARM cores, but that SoC is responsible for _so much_. It dictates how many inputs your TV can have, it contains all the media-decoding blocks (AIUI, including things like ATSC!), and _it_ handles Dolby Vision, ALLM, and half of the niceties of modern high-end TVs.
So for everyone that doesn't have enough engineering bandwidth/competency/money to build their own silicon for things like this (which includes, oh, say, Sony.), and if you're buying off the shelf, you're getting those cores!
Might as well run Android on them.
[1]: https://www.mediatek.com/products/digital-tv/mediatek-penton...