TL;DR : I was confused by videos, can anyone point me to a good starting point?

I become super interested a few years ago in dnd and bought a phb, the starters kit and the essentials kit, and never got to use them. I've played a few PbP games that never finished on discord. Even attempted to run DoIP a few times just for my party to fall apart. I watched a few of the videos posted in the about section here, and really only became more confused unfortunately. I think the video kept referring to a emulation program that runs the game with AI? Is that how solo play is done? One video I saw said the time commitment is about the same, which is fine, but is that true in all cases? I want to play the modules I bought, but I'm willing to try anything you guys have played. I've been hungry to TTRPG for years!