In the world of digital hoarding and home media servers, space is the final frontier. As 4K becomes standard and TV series box sets stretch into hundreds of gigabytes, the question is no longer "Can I store it?" but "How long can I afford to store it?"
To truly prefer x265, you need a that punishes x264. The "Anti-Anime" Block Anime encoders love 10-bit x265. TV scene groups love x264. Use this regex in Preferred Terms with a high negative score: sonarr prefer x265
Sonarr will aggressively grab x265 releases first. If no x265 exists for an old episode, it will fall back to x264. This keeps your automation running smoothly without "stuck" searches. Part 3: The Advanced Regex Method (For Power Users) Basic tagging fails because uploaders are inconsistent. Some release groups tag HEVC , others tag x265 , and some use H.265 . Worse, fake uploaders tag x265 on low-bitrate garbage. In the world of digital hoarding and home
Your Quality Profile overrules your Codec preference. If you have "WebDL 1080p" set to score 100, and "HDTV 720p x265" set to score 50, Sonarr takes the 1080p x264. Fix: Lower your quality scores or create a Custom Format that is mutually exclusive. TV scene groups love x264
If a file has x264 in the title, it loses 10000 points. If it has x265 , it gains 10000. The x265 file wins by 20,000 points. Sonarr will literally download a lower quality x265 file (like a WEB-DL) before downloading a remux x264.