I have a dvd collection that I would like to rip and store on my Hard drive and watch on my Xbox via XBMC. I've ripped a few dvds with Dvd shink to .iso format and the Xbmc reads them fine but they are like 4.5gb + or so. What Video format can I rip my dvds to that the picture and sound quality (dts & dolby digital) is same as a 4.5gb iso rip? And what software to do it with?

I have a dvd collection that I would like to rip and store on my Hard drive and watch on my Xbox via XBMC. I've ripped a few dvds with Dvd shink to .iso format and the Xbmc reads them fine but they are like 4.5gb + or so. What Video format can I rip my dvds to that the picture and sound quality (dts & dolby digital) is same as a 4.5gb iso rip? And what software to do it with?
Leave them alone and get more HDDs. If you are going to watch these on a small screen TV then you could re-encode them to DivX(I am not sure if XBMC plays DivX).

IMO there are NO magic video formats that shrink video size without quality loss. Re-encoding is time comsuming and HDDs are cheap....so just buy more HDDs.

XBMC plays DivX perfectly! Like digitalkid2 says, it depends on how big your TV is as to how much you can compress your DVD's. I personally have a 55" HDTV and I do not compress any of my movies. I have heard that you can resize down to about 80% and not notice "much" difference. On a side note, I do compress my kids movies, they don't notice and I don't watch...lol You can always convert a movie over to Divx to a 2 Gig file size and also a 700 Kb file size (those are the 2 default compression sizes I think) and see if you see a difference between the original and the other 2. Do a google search, there are several DVD to DivX converters for free out there...

Good Luck!

Use xVid as a compression format. Better than divx IMO.

The programs you want are DVDDecrypter, ripit4me, Auto GK 2.40

The first two rip the DVD to your computer in vob format. The later will encode to xvid or divx at the ratio of compression you specify. I leave the settings alone and put quality at 75%. My movies end up between 1.2 to 2.0GB each depending on length and how much action, etc in the movie. I watch on a 40" HDTV through my xbox and notice zero quality diff between the original DVD.

If you haven't gotten the xbox yet, you will love it. I just got mine modded 2 weeks ago and am in awe over its features and beautiful GUI. I don't see going HD movies for a while so not worried about that missing feature. Just ordered a 1TB drive too so I can encode all my movies to xvid. I have 500 movies so that's a lot of space.

For websites on encoding guides, etc check out: doom9.org, afterdawn.com and digital-digest.com. You can find guides on using all the above programs as well as being able to download them all. The best part is, all this software is freeware too. Don't waste money on the commercial stuff.

PM me if you have more questions.

Yes I have gotten the xbox and loaded XBMC. Set it to 720p and looks amazing on my 50" panasonic plasma. Your right, HDDs are so cheap these days no point tin compressing dvds. Leaving them at the standard 4.5gb is fine, come to think of it, it is already compressed cuz most good quality dvds are like 6gb +. I have the samsung drive (the one with 2 holes) but it doesnt play dvd+r for some reason.