What format to use?

[hand179]

Hi. Looking for some basic advice pls. When I rip a DVD to my hard drive, I am not sure what format to use. If I intend to watch a film on a 42" or larger LCD or plasma TV, what is the best, highest quality format to use? Can I use Handbrake to do this? I assume that using a high quality format will result is pretty large files, around 5GB - 8GB.

If I intend to watch a film on a mobile device, I use Handbrake to produce an M4V file, which is usually around 1GB in size for a film.

But what if you want to sometimes watch a film on a large screen TV and sometimes on a mobile device? Do you rip two versions of the film onto your hard drive, one in high quality format and one in M4V? What is the best strategy for ripping DVD's and managing your film library on your hard drive when you want to watch films both on large screen and small screen devices? To maintain two copies of each film on your hard drive, or just one copy? If just one copy, in what format?

Thank you for your advice on this!

[newbay415]

My question is similar and I hope someone has the answer:
I will want to view movies on large TV and on Mac and mobile (iPhone).
Is there one setting/format, which covers both situations? I am not concerned about file size.

[dynaflash]

My question is similar and I hope someone has the answer:
I will want to view movies on large TV and on Mac and mobile (iPhone).
Is there one setting/format, which covers both situations? I am not concerned about file size.

Probably apple > universal. You have to play to your lowest common denominator.

[Deleted User 11865]

I will want to view movies on large TV and on Mac and mobile (iPhone).

iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, older iPhone?