AVI TO MPG - Best Quality Conversion Program

I have a lot of .avi films that i am looking to convert to .mpg or .mpeg so i can play them on my media centre extender.

I am currently using ImToo Mpeg Encoder to convert the files. But the converted files are off poor quality when i play them on the extender, even though the .avi files are perfectly clear.

I have tired to change the settings and even had a .mpeg file at 3gb (.avi 700mb) and still poor quality.

Does anyone know of a better way, or better software to use to convert .avi files??? or even better if anybody has got .avi files playing on a media centre extender lol!!!!!! that would be the day!!

Any help would be great guys

 

Canopus Procoder, mainconcept encoder, CCE Basic, or tmpgenc plus, in that order.

 

QuEnc. HCEnc.
if the source is crap. it will be crap.
just use high bitrate. any encoder will look good.