Best format for ripping DVDs

[Pondlife]

I want to be able to watch DVDs whilst travelling and so am going to rip them onto a HDD.

Question: Am I better off rippingthe whole DVD with something like DVDShrink and loading the .iso in order to watch?

Or am I better off converting the film to .avi DivX, XVid, MP4 etc. If this is the case - which format and software (free) is best?

Will be watching them full screen via media centre or the like.

TIA

PL.

[chicane]

If your priority is image quality and you're not short of storage space, you'll be best off creating an exact-replica ISO rip of the DVD and playing this from the HDD.

Transcoding into other formats (divx etc) has the potential to reduce the storage requirement but may also degrade the image quality.