[masraum]

Originally Posted by Scott R

Blu-ray? Or standard 480 stuff?

Standard DVDs, not Blu-ray.

Originally Posted by spuggy

Not using joke software...

Frankly, if you want the very best quality, don't transcode into a different format at all.

Any conversion process (like from MPEG2 - native format for DVD video - to H.264) essentially takes a compressed, lossy, format, expands it and then re-compresses it again using another, lossy format.

Rip it to a bit-for-bit copy of the ISO image the DVD was mastered from and then use media center software that can either deal with playing the .ISO file or the DVD image from the folder it's stored in.

If you're concerned about file size (heck, I can't see why with the cost per TB now, but some are)

I don't want VOB or ISO images, mp4 or MKV or hell, even AVI, and I do want the images to be a bit smaller.

there *are* about a bazillion transcoding programs that actually work. You may need to twiddle with encoding methods/options to get the best results, or use multi-pass encoding. Life's generally too short...

Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. I figured some folks here have probably twiddled a bit and I was hoping to learn from them.