No it doesn’t.

Why? Because I don’t use it as a TV AND a set top box. I use it just as a TV that is connected to an AppleTV

And before when I was using the inbuilt smart TV, I had disabled various android services related to ads on my Sony TV, and run pi-hole that blocks ads.

Nope. Takes maybe 3-5 seconds to start from when I press any button on my Shield remote. HDMI CEC autoselects the input and everything reliably about 98% of the time. Once in a while (every couple months) I need to reboot my shield which is annoying. Faster than my old CRTs would warm up and get to full color output, degauss, etc. Better experience than some chunky expensive universal remote using IR blasters to coordinate it all.

Far better than anything I ran in the 90's or even 00's.

2025 model of the latest and greatest LG OLED. TV not connected to Internet, because who on HN would actually do that?

Even with your chosen set top box it's cheaper than ever before. It's on you if you choose to use the built-in Internet players. Those effectively come for free and you get what you pay for in that regard. No different than the 90's or 00's buying a cable box, VCR, or DVD player. Cheaper actually, since a Shield or Apple TV replaces all those devices into one quite relatively affordable device.

TVs overall are far better quality in terms of user experience. And I'm someone who has always had an overkill home theatre setup I spend far too much money on and upgrade far too often. It's only gotten better performance for dollar my entire life.

I suppose if you enjoy channel flipping it might be worse? But that's not something I really do much of, so hard to comment there.