Around 2010 there was this "pledge" where a website people basically collected a list of things they'd require in order to stop pirating tv shows and movies and I think it came down to:
Provide easy access to large library
Provide multi language support, must offer original language
Allow downloads/offline viewing
Be reasonably priced
Plus some additional stuff I can't remember.
When Netflix got big, they basically covered it all. Then everyone wanted a piece of the pie.
I may have lowered the skull and crossbones, and folded it up, and stored it away, but I never got rid of it. I'm building my Plex server, and sailing the seas again
It's basically a Torrent tracker as a service with a web interface to directly stream your torrents in your browser or to a Chromecast, Apple TV and whatever.
You pay for the amount of storage you want, then you select whatever torrents you want to download, either via a browser extension or services like chill.institute that look through common torrent search engines for you and give the opportunity to download instantly to your put.io account. You're completely in charge of your library and put.io won't show you anything you didn't download yourself.
I don't know, perhaps I'm not getting the question.
It's basically a streaming service with a library that you fill yourself. It doesn't matter if you use a laptop, app or streaming dongle to watch the content. I'd say that it's easier to watch content if you already own a dongle like a Chromecast though.