Admit to downloading a car and you on a list forever.

I'm going to chime in with what I think. I've been sailing the seas for a while now. And at the end of the day I am all for people doing whatever the fuck they want. Want to pay for streaming? Fine. Want to digitize you library of blurays, cassettes, dvd. etc..? Go for it. Wants to share everything you have? Cool. Want to be a bootlicker? Fine, I guess. Want to hit n run every torrent you every come across? You a bitch, but I mean there isn't anything really stopping you. Luckily, certain communities have ways to weed out people that dont share similar values (whatver they may be). I am part of a thriving one. I am more of the belief that all media should be available to everyone forever. That's all I'ma say about that, and at the end of the day I know of the issues with this sort of thinking, but I am not gonna elaborate nor argue with anyone about anything.

At the end of the day people will do what they want (for the most part). With regards to the larger idea of paying for content. That is gonna be done in one way or another depending on what you do. If you never want to pirate? That's fine you'll just have to pay for interent and whatever streaming services you want. You also run the risk on never again being able to access certain shows, movies for a variety of reasons (licensing issues, because company's can just pull the "fuck you" card, etc). As for pirating, the cost of this is always going to depend on what you want to do and how long. The minimum you will need is a HDD/drive to download your shit, internet, and then a player to play said shit (TV, android box, etc..). If you want to do more you'll have to pay or have available a computer that will host your shit (old computer, NAS, etc). If you have a robust collection or are digitizing your movies/shows, once again you are gonna need drives. You can get an external drive or invest in those huge drives (20+TB) to get more bang for your buck, but they also aren't pocket change to throw around. Luckily drives are always getting cheaper, but know that they don't last forever and they arent always super cheap depending on how big you want them. As for services to stream your shit to your devices, there are plenty of free and paid things to make that happen.

There are also tools/services that I pay for that have made obtaining content much easier, but by no means are they necessary to eventually get the media. I'm not gonna lie, it does seem a little ironic that I have had to pay to do/obtain the things I have, but I do not regret it at all. These tool and services allow me to have the collection and allowed me to do it quickly for the most part. I am part of a community that is thriving and passionate about what they care about with regards to media. I am not going to go into the whole, "is it moral?", or "where does piracy stand?" argument cause at the end of the day I don't give a fuck nor am i going to try and moralize piracy or whatever . People can do that till the cows come home and feel any which way they want. Not my business and has no bearing on what I am doing.

Back to the point of money and piracy, like I said, one "pays" for media on one way or another. Some forms are cheaper, others are more convenient, and some choice are maybe even both. At the end of the day, nothing is really free, from how I see things, but its just about what you care about doing, how fast you want something, how long you want said thing, and convenience.

I use subscene and opensubtitles for when I need srt files. You can also look into addicted (spelled wrong).

As someone has brought up SubtitleEdit (program) is super useful is you need to OCR some PGS/SUP (bluray subtitle formats) files. You can also sync an existing SRT to your video file if push come to shove (this is usually my last resort though because its may be a lot of work if it isnt just a simple sync shift - doing line by line is awful).

Mobilism, Audiobookbay, yandex (the search engine yes.. very easy if you just use key words in your queries). I'm sure private forums are helpful as well.

Edit: I use mobilism quite a bit and audiobook websites that have links for rapidgator or other hosts. Having a debrid service (all, real, etc) is super helpful because I can usually use the premium link service to convert the link so I can download at full speed. Not all hosts are supported but its not often I find a link from a host that isnt supported. If this does happen, I just bite the bullet and go ahead with a slow download.

Audiobookbay has a lot. So does Mobilism. There are private trackers you can look into, but I am not to acquainted with those. Also use Yandex cough for reasons

Music is a weird subject for me. I download practically everything else to have a copy of it on my hard drives. 30+TB of anime, movies, tv shows, manga, audiobooks, etc but music is the one thing I dont really download or listen to very often. I have a modded Spotify app that I use for the times I do listen to music. I do this so i dont have to pay for a subscription, but that is as far as my music piracy goes.

My rule of thumb is to just wait till the blu-ray is released. Ill either get a remux or a very solid encode. Web-DLs can usually be found earlier than the blu-ray release too (usually like month, or a few weeks, before the BD release). I'm not saying rips or cams cant be "good quality", but I would rather watch an actual scene release or closer to the quality of a physical counterpart. I'd rather be patient and just wait for better releases.

I don't feel too strongly one way or the other. It's alright. You can make up your own mind about it. Anime fans tend to circle jerk a lot of things. If you like it, cool. If you don't, cool.

At the end of the day it's about what you like, what is available, and how much space you got.

My rule of thumb has been 8GB per hour of content for 4K (I don't remember where I heard of got this from, so at the end of the day, this is just some arbitrary number). I usually stick to x265 encodes and so far this had been good enough for me. Some prefer the best (untouched remux), but like you mention, these files are huge. Even though I have many drives, I dont want each movie being 70+GB per file. Sometimes I break my rule of thumb and do get "higher quality" (that isn't a remux). I think the biggest file I have is around 50GB for a x265 2160p encode of a movie where a certain king returns. As with everything, there are exceptions. Just do what you want.

This has been good enough for me. Obviously, the bitrate of audio matters and its format. That, in and of itself, is a whole other issue ( lossless or not, channels, etc..)

Fucking absurd.

I mainly download x265. I have a few AV1 4K here and there but for now will still to HEVC till AV1 get more widely adopted

I have been using it for the past few years. I haven't had any issues so far.

I mainly stick to x265 for the size. I'm not too snobby with quality and for the size its fine with me. I want to like AV1 but have issue with playback on some of my devices. Usually i just play locally off a HDD on xbox (Kodi) . This may not be an issue if/when I get a NAS. Not sure if there are issues with transcoding as I haven't really looked into it

Anna's Archive & Z-Lib. You can search by language. I cant speak on how big/good its German catalogue is though.

I use All and Real. Real has been very useful because of its larger user base, thus ensuring that many more things are cached and maintained. Also streaming is very easy with other things like Kodi and its addons. AllDebrid also has many of the same things cached as real. Ive had many instanced where things were on All and not on Real. I also think things download faster on All than on Real (but this is just from my experience).

I usually download stuff through Nyaa to get .cbz files of full volumes. Of the few times I have had to get a series myself I have used Houdoku. It's similar to tachiyomi on desktop. I usually rip from Mangadex but have had to manually name folder files to eventually zip into cbz files. This may not be that helpful but just thought it plug in Houdoku to see if it helps with what you need

Edit: Lol I didn't really read your post well. Yeah, personally, I dont know of any automated solutions, sorry.

TG and 1337 are pretty good and have me covered. I also have a copy of the RARBG database that has the hashes that I use if I want to find something from there. Pretty easy to get the magnets from Qbit and then save the magnet back as a .torrent and then check if there are already cached in a debrid service. Pretty easy and simple

My home-base is a private forum (DDL). I think of it as a place where people gather the best media from around the internet. We may not get it first but it eventually makes its way there. There are also many exclusive uploads (mostly encodes) but people do some fantastic work with upscales of movies and/or TV series. The user base is also part of the many private trackers the world has to offer. I am part of like 2 private trackers and they are phenomenal as well. I also use public trackers extensively as well as there is actually a lot of stuff out there. I will always try and seed for public trackers but I definitely don't go as long as I would for private ones (just cause I don't want to get dinged) (Yeah I could use a VPN but too lazy, even though I am in a place that don't give many fucks about media piracy). I prefer DDL because I don't have to maintain ratio, but I do understand that with private trackers there can be some more longevity (but isn't really guaranteed). There are also other private trackers of the index variety that aren't built around ratio which can be nice.

There can be a lot of rules with private trackers, and yes some of them are really annoying, not gonna lie. The rules are there for a reason, for the most part. For some it's about building a community, while for others it's about making sure stuff survives for as long as possible. There are so many tools for a fellow seafarer to have and private trackers are just one of them and they serve a purpose. I am of the belief that all information should be available to everyone forever, but the world don't work like that and the long dick of the law can really fuck you life up. I think a valuable lesson from private trackers is that it makes one not just be a leech and makes one give back. There is nothing wrong with leeching, but I always like to think that piracy is about sharing the wealth. (not trying to moralize piracy, to each their own)

But as you said, public trackers have A LOT of stuff. So much media can be found on them. Private trackers help if you want the best of the best with regards to certain media or for hard to find stuff. Each have their place and it all about using the tools available to you

With Alldebrid? I mean the premium link generator still works well and fine. It's just the cyberlocker aspect of it with regards to torrents that is messed up, since they used Uptobox. Still a bummer tho.

https://x.com/... According to Uptobox's tweet none of the data lost, but I would take that with a grain of salt. Thus, I don't know how its gonna affect things at Alldebrid and all those cached torrents

I have like 20TB+ worth of external drives right now that hold all my shit (movies, tv shows, audiobooks, anime, manga, roms, etc.) I want to buy a 4+bay NAS and eventually set it up for streaming. However, right now I just have a an excel file that is organized but each drive and what is contained in each one. I just connect my drive to my Xbox series X and just play it with Kodi. I do have Fen (and I think the Promise) connected to RD. I know I can stream practically stream anything but I really do like having the actual files (I may be a digital hoarder).