DVD->WMV to 360

[Helltrain]

I have been working on converting DVD's to WMV files with TMPGenc Xpress 4.0. I pulled some settings from an old 3.0 guide and went from there. My first DVD turned out pretty well, but it took an extremely long time! Does anyone else use TMPGenc Xpress 4.0 for this and what settings do you use?

My goal is to retain as much sound and video quality as I can while compressing to WMV. I am thinking that I am going to get a 720p projector one of these days, and I will have it upconvert most of my video sources. I am converting to WMV because I want to stream from the HTPC to multiple extenders (XBOX 360) throughout the house.

Should I be deinterlacing?
Is there any benefit to cropping out the black bars from wide screen video?
Do you think the WMA9.1 pro 5.1 audio is as good as ac3, is there a way to demux the audio and add the ac3 back into the WMA file?

[Baldrick]

one topic is enough.
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=309705&highlight=
reply to add new information.