Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Hello sailors,

as a long time FireTV stick un-enjoyer, I finally decided that the time has come to get rid of this piece of crap I was baited into buying because of the low price. The number of streaming services keeps increasing (splitting content among different servives) and each and every one of them is demanding for an increasing amount of money for a monthly subscription; "buy this movie only" services dont actually give you shi except for the right to stream it for as long as it stays in their library, even though af course you pay 13,99 as if it was a physical copy of a movie. In addition to that, the FireTV is now completely filled with ads. I am tired of this shitty customer treatment, im sailing.

I am not experienced into local media-sharing and management, so I am looking for advice... What's my best move to replace it?

I thought a good idea would be to buy an unexpensive MiniPC that i can put behind the TV? Is that overkill? But what OS would i put into it? A linux distro I am guessing or Android TV? Is there a way I can interact with it using a remote? Are there instead "better" FireTV sticks (no ads and let users install and watch what they want)?

Gimme advice or share your secret setups please :)