DVD-Rip. What size?

So, I'm sitting here with the Family Guy Vol. 1 DVD set in front of me and I wonder to myself "What size should I rip this shit to?"

Well, I dunno. It all depends on how much hard drive capacity I have in my file server, and if I care about how it will look when I play them on my future LCD or plasma.

First: my server. I currently have 2 X 250GB in RAID-1 configuration. So it's just 250GB of usable space. I don't care to trust my hard work, time and memories to $70 worth of hardware. The least I can do is double my chances and RAID the drives. I still have room for 5 more drives in this bitch, so technically space won't be much of an issue (as much as the cost of that shit! arg).

LCD/Plasma display: Haven't decided on which one yet, but that doesn't matter now. It'll be a 1080p display because it's the latest shit. Can a computer's video card even output 1080p? Anyway, the higher the resolution of the video, the better it will look.

So, a normal DVD is between 4 and 8GB. Is there a formula based on length of film and file size that I should use? Should I just limit everything to 2GB? Input would be great.

Edit: I guess I should mention that I'll be encoding with H264.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

If it's sourced from DVD, I found that a 1:100/1:75 ratio works well. 1 being the end file size and the 100/75 being the size of the source material completely uncompressed. If you go by DVD's metrics, uncompressed 720x480 progressive scan video at 30fps (assuming 24bit color) would be 248832kbps. Divided by 100, it would be 2488.32kbps or just under 2500kbps. Anything above 3000kbps would be overkill for Mpeg-4 (especially h.264), at bitrates that high, you might as well just make DVD ISOs.

100x lossy compression ratio from source material for video is about the same as 6-8x lossy compression for CD audio, what you'd expect from a 235-176 LAME VBR mp3. This is for standard DivX/Xvid Mpeg-4 BTW, h.264 could theoretically push the compression up by 50% or even 100%.

I have found with XviD 1536kbps is a good start would quality vs filesize balance. Try fiddling with a short clip of video and see how low (or high) you're willing to go before you're satisfied. Since I'm not you and I haven't encoded to h.264, I would assume anywhere from 1000-2500kbps would look nearly indistinguishable from DVD source.

Pretty much any video card can pull 1080p or higher, my six year old GeForce 2Ti (on my old PC, my new one's better), can pull 2048x1536, which is makes 1080p look anemic. Since DVD's are 720x480, you'll need to be more liberal on file sizes. What looks perfect for a DVD transcode at 1024x768 might look mediocre at 1080p, and keep in mind a 720p or higher display can pretty easily show the flaws in DVDs, even the really nicely mastered ones.

How ya doing, buddy?