I agree. PC entertainment system has been the way to go for me for nearly 25 years for the reasons you mentioned, can't see that changing. Back in the day my ISP came with cable tv too, but that was mostly crap.
Cheers
It was a bitch to get it to work right and when I was young I didn't have enough storage to really use it properly but "MythTV". A open source Linux based DVR system that basically told the companies to fuck themselves. It had built in commercial detection (that mostly worked) back in the early 2000's.
Yeah I took a look at MythTV a couple of times over the years but I was never really into 'all in one' solutions and it seemed too much work for an add on.
Like you say all you really need is a pc and wireless keyboard and it's never been easier.