Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

the joys of a 5tb hard drive plugged directly into my TV

You're missing out on the joys of a Plex or Jellyfin server with a quality streaming device plugged into the TV. No way would I waste time manually transferring files around like that. With Sonarr and Radarr I don't even waste time manually downloading stuff.

I use a Nvidia Shield Pro to stream to, it works great for my 4k BluRay Remuxes. I personally hate using the built-in TV features because the quality and codec support can be a total crapshoot.

Get an Nvidia Shield or AppleTV. They are best-in-class devices and anything else is going to lead to some sort of compromise. They’ll last for years and are worth the money spent.

Then set up an app like Jellyfin, Plex, or Infuse (AppleTV only) to stream the files over your local network. You’ll be able to play back everything from those small 200mb rips to the 80gb+ 4K Bluray Dolby Vision remuxes with 7.1 lossless audio.

Most (all?) Bravia series televisions have built in android TV and the interface is imo super slick and not bloated.

I have a x950h plugged in ethernet and I can stream Plex in 4k HDR DV without any issues. It's basically plug and play.

5.1.4 surround. I use an nvidia Shield for playing back files (via kodi), and it works pretty well.

LG OLED TV-s are where it's at. Superb picture quality and prices have come down considerably.

As for sound, Denon 3600/3700/3800 AVR--everything else is either overpriced or crap (or both). The 3000 series has good power amp section and Audyssey MultEQ XT32 which actually does something below 100 Hz where room correction is most needed (see https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/difference-between-audyssey-multeq-vs-multeq-xt-vs-multeq-xt32.14786/#post-460377). For speakers I quite like ELAC Debut Reference speakers and SUB3030 subwoofer--price-performance ratio is really good.

That's for the normal consumer level stuff. Of course, if you have the time and will, you can do what I have done and go down the rabbit hole of DIY speakers and subs to end up with something that blows the socks off of actual THX cinemas--highly recommended ;)

I have a 7.1 home theatre setup with a 4K 55” hooked up to AppleTV.

I use the Infuse app. They have a free trial version in the App Store. Tried it, the setup was easy for me and the player did exactly what I wanted: play media files from a local network drive. Supports a wide range of encodes, audio codecs, 1080p, 2160p, HDR, and so forth. I bought the lifetime subscription after that, which is good for all future versions including the big updates.

For setup, I have a small PC with 2 x 5TB HDDs shared through my local network. Both the PC and the AppleTV are connected via Ethernet (no wireless or you might experience playback issues from time to time)