TiVo Mini Without Service

My brother has a TiVo Mini and is moving to a new apartment where he's contemplating cutting the cord. The Mini is currently on my account, but we could put it on a new account if necessary. To my knowledge, he's not planning on buying a "standard" TiVo (I.e., Roamio, Bolt). If he doesn't connect the unit with access to a cable subscription, will he still have access to Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, etc.? Or does he need a full subscription with activated service to access these services?

(Sorry if this has been addressed previously, I didn't search for it because I'm a terrible person.)