Downloadable, ad free, and DRM free. Music has been selling that way for decades. I've spent thousands on that kind of media, I'd have spent 10 times as much if it had been made available that way. Some people purchase a controlled versions to atone for their pirating sins but that just rewards consumer-hostile business models, and most of the money goes to middle-men that only add negative value to the product they're selling.
Most of the time I watch things once, so I rent it if it's not on a platform I subscribe to. Generally then I can watch it on my tv, ps4, phone, computer, whatever.
Consider that money spent on these products are an indication to studios about what people like. Movie studios, production companies, they make stuff they think they can sell for a profit. I suggest that you try renting movies or buying ones you like. If you run into a situation where one of your concerns comes to life, I think it would be very reasonable to pirate something you've made a good faith effort to pay for. This is kind of how I started and now for the most part I rent/buy with some exceptions. Still downloading some trash tv shows.
Most, if not all, things I've downloaded, which isn't much, I've either rented before, seen on TV or in a theater, or have been on one of the streaming services I pay for at some point. Does that cover me ethically? Some people seem to think so. I personally don't care either way and not a single person on this planet is any worse off for my lack of concern.
Actually it's kind of easier than torrenting and copying files around to various devices I want to watch it on.
(That being said, I do have access to cable television, netflix, and amazon prime streaming as well as the piracy setup, so people are getting paid. I'm not going to go buy a bunch of old red-dwarf and dilbert DVDs though, they just take up too much space)
But I'm so jealous of the user experience for people who buy into a $5/mo plex and get better service than I'm paying for. IMO, that's broken.
So much time wasted, figuring out what service to watch something on, dealing with content ads, bad user interfaces... having content vanish and become unavailable, etc.
I don't even watch much video, but it's still way too much of a sink on my time.
My intent is that someone somewhere reads this and decides to let me buy their damn content. It's not a justification, it's an appeal. Put your album on bandcamp. Put your game on itch/gog/your own website/humble bundle, preferable without intrusive DRM. I have no idea where you'd put a movie or TV show, but there's probably some place.
Please.
I go to e.g. the South Park website, and I'm greeted by an error message saying they're "working hard to resolve [their] pre-existing contractual obligations," which is the same message they've shown for years. Thanks for trying, I guess, but if I pirated it then I'd just...watch the show, from start to finish, with all seasons and all episodes, no wasteful physical media, no subscription, no data collection, and no ads. That sounds good. I want to be able to pay money, maybe even quite a lot of money, and do that.