Disabling ads is easy, don’t connect it to the internet ever

Any way to connect it to an internal network so I can still cast from local devices? Otherwise it’s just going to exist plugged into a laptop.

You probably can give it a static ip through your router and block any access to the internet for it. Could even set up pihole to block the ads from coming in to any device. That said, it’s possible the TV has built in ads or error messages to show in place of the ads when offline/blocked, or may just not even work if offline for longer than x minutes/hours/days

I have an old Intel nuc that I could slap a hard drive in. It wouldn’t have to handle all traffic, right?