You don’t have to let your TV do the streaming though, it just needs to play it. Lots of other devices can connect to streaming services, eg gaming consoles and DVD players. Me, I have a media PC that does all the fun stuff (and lets me stream my library while I’m away), but you could easily use an old laptop.
This is how I do it too. I bought a mini office PC and HDMI’d it to the TV. It’s nothing fancy, just an i5, a wifi card and IHD GPU. I threw Kodi onto it, cancelled every streaming service I was using, and then returned to the high seas to fill up the 10TB external HDD I connected. When a new episode of something drops, I just download it and then Kodi nicely organizes everything.
Unfortunately streaming has become the norm, and cable’s no longer affordable
I’d rather go outside if that’s how it’s gonna be
You don’t have to let your TV do the streaming though, it just needs to play it. Lots of other devices can connect to streaming services, eg gaming consoles and DVD players. Me, I have a media PC that does all the fun stuff (and lets me stream my library while I’m away), but you could easily use an old laptop.
This is how I do it too. I bought a mini office PC and HDMI’d it to the TV. It’s nothing fancy, just an i5, a wifi card and IHD GPU. I threw Kodi onto it, cancelled every streaming service I was using, and then returned to the high seas to fill up the 10TB external HDD I connected. When a new episode of something drops, I just download it and then Kodi nicely organizes everything.
I’m a Jellyfin guy, but same.
There is a Jellyfin addon for Kodi, just saying.