Apple Home Instability after 16.3.1

I disabled most of my appletv devices from being home hubs. Once one of my HomePods picked up the hub role, the thread network started to connect up. I don’t know if I just had too many devices on the hub list or there is a bug in tvOS 16.3.1.

My latest observation is pretty troubling to me. When my older HomePod minis serve as hub, things are working well. But when my new pair of 2nd gen HomePods are the hub, all of my devices that require an external hub (in my case aquara, starling, and pulse) will not connect. I now have my expensive 2nd gen HomePods unplugged until the next apple update.

A further update after updating all homepods and apple TV devices to 16.3.2. Only one of my home pods (a mini) connects all of my thread devices. No Apple TV (I have 6 4Ks) and no other homepod (I have 5 minis and 2 2nd gen homepods) will connect all devices in my home. They just sit in a "No Response" state, and when I look at the thread network (via the Eve app), they show as "unreachable". Of course, the Apple devices appear to connect fine. But anything third party is problematic, including a plethora of Eve and Nanoleaf devices that are thread-compatible, Aqara and Starling hubs, and my Schlage Encode lock.

I don't understand why different HomePods and Apple TVs behave so differently. Perhaps something to do with the underlying bluetooth network? I could cope with the one fully functioning HomePod if Apple would let me set a preferred hub or let me disable the hub role on HomePods like it does on Apple TVs. But since I can't I have to play "reset roulette" with the HomePods until I get the one fully functioning HomePod to be the hub. Sadly, which device is hub seems to change overnight on many occasions so I have to do this a lot.