Same as you, I also haven’t fully dipped my toes to the world of self-hosting (yet).

1. For non-animation movies/series, I wade through the popular/trending categories or read recommendation from friends, lemmy or, god forbid, reddit. I don’t really need to do this lately as my shows backlog is as long as my games backlog.
2. For convenience always. 720p is fine for me.
3. I stream. Unless it is one of my favorites I want to keep.
4. Real-debrid+Stremio.
5. Stremio does it for me. Also for anime, I have Anilist.

True for English shows, I had substantially harder time finding non-English shows.

Not OP but I often get 50% off promo for any beverage from Starbucks app.

You’re not using adblocker?

Edit: Just read the other commenter. Where do you watch shows with your kids? TV or Computer? If it’s on Desktop or Laptop it’s easy af, but Smart TV less so but not impossible.