best method of playing back DVD rips

[mike503]

here is my other thread, with some background:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1231660

i'm torn between this forum and the other one, for my specific question.

basically i'm looking to figure out what the target bitrate/resolution should be to play back movies at near-dvd quality. reading some other threads in this forum, it seems people are suggesting an XBMC to be a good piece of hardware for playback, and it's ability to act as a pseudo-computer means it can mount drives from other computers over wifi or wired ethernet, which is what i'm going to be doing.

basically when i rip my DVDs to a single file (i'm assuming xvid or divx) i want to keep the 6 channel surround audio, or whatever the best quality audio is available, and ditch the lower quality feeds. will an XBMC export the 6 channels properly? or will i need to build an HTPC with a nice sound card, or is it actually impossible to get the 6 channels out of the file?

i figure audio is the easiest one to answer. the next question would be video. i was told i might as well rip it at it's original resolution. so if it's 720x480 i should keep it that way. i assume i should keep the same fps and same aspect ratio as well. however, i have options for codecs and optimizations, and bitrates, and all those variable things that i'm still a little shady on...

the output right now is a 32" sony trinitron, and in the future i plan on going with a nice 32" probably or bigger HDTV - high quality picture, so i don't want to be playing back crap quality DVD backups on it.

thanks in advance, for any information or links. i've been trying out different programs and such...

would exporting svideo off my laptop be a good test for the quality of my DVD rips? i tried it the other night, but i don't want to consider that the litmus test if it's not really how the TV out/video out stuff -actually- works.

[mike503]

once again - any feedback is helpful.

thanks in advance.