I'm happy to be the Gary for my less technically inclined friends. Their lack of knowledge would get me kicked off private trackers if I invited them so they could curate their own collections, so it's just easier to be the guy who makes it easy for them.
if it's a relatively modern show, QxR. if it's an ongoing show, and I'm trying to get the episodes as they come, I'll just wait for the first 1080px265 available. it's usually ELiTE
I run prowlarr and added a handful of en-us public movies trackers. Sometimes this results in duplicate results on a search, but any time I have to take manual action, it's very obvious and easy to skip.
Don't really have a particular favorite, although Subsplease is pretty snappy for anime if you want it as-it-releases.
Otherwise, for groups focused on US/UK/European media, whatever's got the quality range I'm seeking and preferably a season pack all from the same group/same quality.
I’m probably in the minority, but I like the Epsilon remuxes and then compress it myself to av1 with ffmpeg. DTS-HD MA track goes to opus. I keep the English subtitles as-is.
You absolutely could automate it, but I personally enjoy making the encodes, so I don’t. Especially with movies, sometimes you use opus but on a select few, like the Dune movies, I keep the original atmos audio because it makes the movie experience better imo.
But for tv series, my ffmpeg settings are pretty static so it would be trivial to automate that.
I don't really care about the name attached to the file (I'm more interested in quality and compatibility). Usually it seems to be something by NTFS (Not Here To Fuck Spiders), SuccessfulCrab, EDITH or ETHEL.