So, suppose you have a load of films stored on a PC in your home and want to watch them on your TV? What you need is a media centre and it only need cost around £90.
There are numerous options but the one I chose was a Raspberry Pi computer running Kodi. There are a number of skins available for Kodi, here it is with the Confluence skin:
Pimoroni are one of several vendors of the Raspberry Pi and many other related goodies. The Raspberry Pi 4 (the latest version) can be found here. At the time of writing (Feb 2023), there’s an acute supply problem which is not expected to be fully resolved until late this year. Supplies arrive sporadically and alternative suppliers are The Pi Hut, Rapid, CPC and Cool Components.
Once you have your Raspberry Pi you’ll need some software on it to make the magic happen. I use Kodi and the necessary software can be found here together with installation guidance.
Once the software is installed it’s just a question of plugging the Raspberry Pi into your TV with an HDMI cable and configuring access to your library of films, TV programmes or whatever.