Plug your laptop directly in via HDMI/DP.

Buy an air mouse/keyboard to control it from your couch.

Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Keyboard-W1-Multifunctional-...

The flexible sovereign combo of a general purpose computer and a user agent.

I use a forever-docked ThinkPad x230 under my TV, which can do 1080p and 802.11n (5GHz).

I second the wireless mouse/ keyboard and will add that I bought a trackball mouse just for this, and it's a wonderful fit. No worrying about a proper surface for moving a mouse around.

I've been doing this for many years. The latest incarnation is an Intel NUC, which you can also use for other random home server stuff, and for vintage console emulation.

What we need is a good, simple dumbtv interface for a computer with network access and a DVB card/stick. One that can also bring up a full-screen browser window to deal with streaming service DRM. Have been considering getting something together with rust+gstreamer starting by cloning my old Philips dumbtv interface while using mplayer/mpv hotkey standards for everything else.

The all-encompassing, endlessly complicated yet somehow still inflexible Kodi is a bad solution for people like me. Let's start by making a dumbtv out of a cheap linux box + a monitor.

Thanks for the tip. It works with both an HDMI cable and wirelessly via AirPlay.

Perhaps too inconvenient for some, but use an hdmi cable for a direct hookup instead of (I'm assuming) a chromecast. Maybe I'm just old fashioned at this point, but my "TV" is just used as a monitor to a dedicated media tower running windows.

I have an Amazon FireTV and one day, when I had my work Windows PC at home, it could stream via Bluetooth (like an external screen). There was lag when starting / changing videos, but otherwise it seemed to work well enough.

Don't most smart TVs have Bluetooth today? In my case, the FireTV is plugged into my (dumb) PC monitor.

It is called Miracast, via Wi-Fi Direct.

A chromecast, from my understanding, is just a web browser. Your device pushes a URL to the cast and the cast loads the web page.

It's not surprising you can't cast without ads - adblock would have to be installed on the chromecast not the device doing the "casting."