Soundbars are bad and there's better alternatives at soundbar price ranges imo. Spend the soundbar money on even a relatively humble set of logitech speakers for a really bare bones simple set up.

I’m not really married to that form factor. I guess I’m more curious about HDMI splitters or pass through and what people do there.

I use a short throw projector with an Apple TV. There’s also a little device called Micca which you can use to play video files you’ve downloaded.

If you're shoveling your data over to Google anyway then why not just get a smart TV and never use its apps?

I’m not paranoid about Google, but smart TVs inevitably come with dreadfully slow boot times, clunky animated menus, and just generally lots of crap to work around, even if you primarily interact with them via HDMI. I miss TVs that respond before you take your finger off the button.

get a seperate usb to audio adaptor and speakers. you can do better than a soundbar.