Torrents yes, if you have access to ... certain websites, usually invite only (or some premium torrent caching services) and obviously, have a decent internet connection combined with the ability to choose where to stream the torrent from (beginning), the movie/tv plays as the information comes in sequentially.

Now I have everything automated, I use Plex as the player, then I have a simple script that listens to when I add a movie to the watch list, in the background it searches for that title and puts it in the download queue, then usually in 1-5 seconds I can hit play.

Biggest problem I encounter is with subtitles, they can be hit or miss, no problem for english shows but can be annoying for non-english ones.

And again, no difference between this and something like Netflix (other than the subs ofc), I can stream 4K, all my family members have access to it, I can stream on my phone, I can download things for offline use, yet I would still pay for this if there was a viable alternative out there.