It's not a surprise, TBH. As someone who likes their technology simple, I find that feature bundling like this is the norm in just about every product space nowadays.
My guess is that market research has found that "people who both want to pay for nicer image quality and don't want smart features" is not a large enough slice of the market to be worth going after. That, or they've found that people who do fall into that market will generally, when forced to choose, accept the smart features (upsell! ka-ching!) rather than choose a less expensive model in order to avoid the smart features.
The value of the usage/tracking information they collect basically subsidizes the real cost of the TV. Similar to other "free" Internet services where you are the product.
They basically don't need to bother with more expensive non-smart TVs. A cheap tv with good picture quality is a win-win.
