Because what I want to watch is spread across 17 different streaming services. Of course you can buy digitally... But then there's no guarantee they won't take that back out of your account. Or edit it later on when they decide something is offensive like happened when I bought the office on Vudu.

Edit: guys, I'm asking a question. Why the downvotes? Also, I'm not talking about PAID streaming.

How you dare to go against Jellyfin in Lemmy, not even Plex stands a chance /s

To answer your question, you actually can use both, as I do.

Plex for more "obscure" content and to enrich my own TV m3u playlist with DizqueTV and Stremio and Kodi with Real Debrid for everything else, if I have a legal streaming service is because it is being borrowed to me lol, I'm more than served with my means.

Because you can control exactly what is on your server. I do the same thing via Plex. I want to watch a movie and it got pulled from the half dozen streaming services I have access to? Fuck it, just download it and add it to my own personal server. Now I have it forever and ever until I decide I’m done watching it.

Genuinely answering:

A decade ago, there was like, Netflix and Hulu. Netflix you paid $8 a month and you got stuff from Paramount, Starz!, most television networks, Disney, the various permutations of Fox. You could watch Friends, Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, Star Trek TNG, and Mythbusters for the same $8/month in one app in one interface.

Now, nearly every network or channel wants their own bespoke app on your device, they EACH cost more than $8 a month, and now you have to remember who makes what content. And still stuff randomly disappears. Or, if there's a "purchase" system like on Amazon where you pay a price per movie/episode/whatever, some contract falling through could mean they get to unilaterally decide how long "forever" is.

I ripped my DVD collection to my NAS and I use Kodi on a Raspberry Pi attached to my (non-smart) television. I don't pay a continuous fee (or nine), I don't scroll endlessly through shit I'm not interested in, stuff doesn't randomly disappear, and it's not going to decide to start playing ads even through I paid for this.

As for torrenting? Don't need the heat. I can buy used DVDs or blu-rays from eBay or my local pawn shop for pennies apiece and have all the content I actually want, legally and conveniently. My ISP doesn't get mad, and everything continues to work.

Plus my NAS does a few other things not related to media consumption, for example it's attached to my UPS and it will send signals to several devices including the UPS and itself to shut down when it's too low on battery. It's kind of nice to have that kind of thing.

What other people said and also that most stuff is available in higher quality than will be streamed to you if it has been released on BDs

I was watching a show and they dropped the rights in my country (no one picked it up), the only option was to steal it via a torrent or steal via VPN…then they blocked VPNs

It works a hell of a lot more reliably than things like fmovies... Streamio can be a little better with real-debrid but then you're still paying...

An actual answer to your real question:

There's basically four options when you want to watch a TV show without paying money for it. You can borrow someone's password to a legal streaming service, you can use an illegal streaming service, you can torrent the show and watch it locally on your machine, or you can torrent the show, put it on a private server, and access it from anywhere.

The first two options are the easiest and legally safest, but you don't have total control over what you get. The services might not have every episode, they might have awful compression, they might take the show away while you're watching it, etc.

The latter two options are legally less safe, but you have more control over what you get. If you only watch the shows you download locally (either on the computer it was downloaded to or from a flash drive), there's no reason to set up a server at all. If you want to be able to access your shows remotely, setting up a server offers the benefits of streaming legally (watch it anywhere, let your friends watch it anywhere), with the benefits of illegally downloading (you decide what's available to watch, it's in whatever quality you want, no one can take it away from you, etc.)

For most people, just streaming is the best option. Most people don't actually care about quality that much–have you ever met someone who doesn't skip ads? Who can watch a youtube video with the mouse on screen? Who doesn't mind the blighted notch taking away part of their phone's screen? That's most people. Not to say streaming is that bad for those of us who care about quality, just saying that if animeflix or watchcartoononline offer good enough quality for me, they offer good enough quality for 95% of the pirate population

In my case I use a Emby server and not "free" streaming options because I can choice the quality, subtitles and on which device I want to watch. Or download it on my phone for offline watching.

All under my control without any ads.

basically, data hoarder. i'm scared of not being able to watch a certain show in the future, even on illegal sites. so i take control of the files myself at very little cost. i had an old computer laying around, and a 4TB HDD is like 60€