PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been advising my clients to use BD players with streaming for their streaming services. This might be an out-of-date reason, but at one time it was very difficult to program an integrated remote to get into TV streaming services and back out again to normal TV use. This was avoided if the TV was simply on the input(s) required to view an AVR's output.

You are correct.
As I stated in my post, it's even better to use a streaming box rather than a BD for this. Because the BD maybe a better experience than using TV apps but a streaming box is better still over BD.
With how inexpensive they are and their size, you can put them on every video display in the home. Offering a consistent interface with the same GUI and services, even when they swap TVs or BD players. Since both TVs & BD are constantly changing on this (even firmware updates on the same device).

Even a house with 8 TVs in it (2 of which are 4K) and local sources on each (worse case scenario), it would only cost around $600-$800 to equip all locations with streaming boxes -Roku, FireTV, WD, etc... AppleTV would set you back a bit, if you went with all 4th Gen models = $1,200

I wasn't advising to use the apps.

I can't say that the player apps are consistently better then the TV apps.

Configuring a remote for the UI on either can be a pain.

A dedicated streamer is possibly a better choice.

I fixed this for you

I only do one kind of streaming, and it has nothing to to do with audio video.... :-)

You lost me.

"A definitely streamer" means what????

I said possibly because there are good and bad streamers out there.

Haha. He said steamers.

I dont know what you guys are talking about. I love Anthem Room Correction. Works everytime.

Thanks for catching that.

It would be grand if spell checkers were context sensitive.

I did a recent 2016 Sony Android TV, which actually did allow for discrete exiting of it's Smart TV features - at least I tested it when inside the Netflix and Youtube apps- I suppose there may be other gotchas hidden in there. There were no pop-up windows asking to confirm the exit of Netflix or Youtube. If you just send a discrete input command to the TV, it acts as a discrete exit command for the "smart tv" features.

This is the one and only smart TV I've set up with Control4 in this way, as I did get consistent results. My discrete for turning on the smart features was "input x" (which ensure the the smart tv stuff is not on screen) and them "menu" which brings up the apps menu. This works fine for Control4 which tracks the last selected source for you and doesn't try to re-issue input commands when a device that is already on is re-selected, which would screw things up.

That being said, I usually just do a Roku or Apple TV.

On a side note, strangely, when using this optical connection to he AVR, the feedback sounds normally produced from navigating the TV's interface were absent, but when playing actual video content the audio played normally. I actually banged my head against a wall for a while thinking the audio wasn't passing back to the AVR, until I finally though to try an actual video.