By now we all know that android TCL TVs have the Chinese backdoor claim. since i bought my tv last year ive been using a firetv on it and i cant complain. BUT, for the sake of argument, is it possible to safely use an android TCL used in conjunction with pihole (or similar), separate vLans, etc?
Both TCL and Hisense are State owned entities, meaning you are directly funding the CCP with every purchase.
CCP reknown for spying on its own citizens, highly doubt they would allow their own companies not to ship a product without some embedded backdoors. TCL may not activate the backdoor in foreign sold devices, but eliminating it completely is too big of an ask.
Answer to question of PiHole being a solution to a software backdoor, No.
Only solution is to never connect TV to the internet.