Happy to buy hardware if needed. Just trying to avoid large streaming services abhorrent business practices.
Well if large streaming services are off the list, then you could act as one. For instance you could host a Jellyfin instance and make it available to your “someone who is not tech savvy”. On the client side, Jellyfin is very much click and watch. But you take on the burden of being the service host and provider of content.
I am not sure you can find “something that just works” reliably over time without ensuring that yourself.