There's a whole unspoken thing about how great HDTVs were from right before the smart TV era, like the ones from around 2007-2012. You'd usually get something like 2-3 HDMI outs, 2 component outs, 1-2 composite outs, RF out, and maybe even optical audio and VGA out. And of course, a whole slew of on-TV buttons to change the channel and control the volume, which isn't something to take for granted anymore. Even the problem with weak speakers on early HDTVs seemed to be more or less solved by this point.
Nobody ever talks about this era of TVs, but I swear, it's when HDTVs peaked. And I'm in a similar boat, I've got a nice 2008 Samsung TV that already has one dead HDMI port.