This. The correct answer is to never connect anything to the internet that doesn't need to be.

are you telling me the reason my tv turns on slowly is because it has internet access?

Possibly. I have a Samsung TV with all of the associated bloatware. Did a hard reset, never connected to the internet, use it exclusively as a display for my Apple TV. Turns on and off using the Apple TV remote via HDMI-CEC, so I can stow away the bloated Samsung remote. Startup time is now perfectly tolerable.

IMO more than startup times, a reason to not connect your TV to the internet is ACR (automated content recognition). Note that ACR works irrespective of the video source.

Old article for background but if anything it’s even more common now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...

Yes

Many devices nowadays use Linux internally and if the development team was too ignorant to change the default, it'll behave like a web server and wait for wifi to connect, then wait for the NTP time synchronization, and only then continue booting to userland.

So yes, you can probably shave off 3 seconds of boot time by never connecting your gadget to the internet.

I can enable fast start for a lot of things and have them draw 100W doing nothing or I can live with a 15W idle TV shelf and slow startups.

Both systems I have are pulling less than 10W at the wall. I measured with a meter - I would need to check but I think its 2W each, I only make a mental note when its 5W or above on a device or group of devices and then I start doing something about it. electricity is fairly expensive here.