Ok I am very new to all of this. I purchased a multimedia pc 2005 system and a linksys media extender. I am trying to put all my DVD's on my Hard drive and just watch them off of my media center. I am looking for the best way to get the video off the dvd and into a format that windows media will accept at the highest quality. From what I am reading it looks like it only accepts .avi is this correct? I don't care about spending money for software if it works considering I just spent 8K to get this home entertainment center up. Any help at all would be great....
you should be able to just use DVD shrink and copy the entire DVD over (dont shrink it) then point media center at the folder with all the files in it.
When you go to back up in Shrink make sure you change target drive on drop down list to "hard disk folder"
Just check out the guides section of this website... dvd to xvid is a good one http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/copy_dvd_to_xvid.cfm