I haven't bought a dvd in years, but I do watch alot of movies on my phone. Just a head's up on a nice additional tool when loading up your phone. Check out Vio, which was released awhile ago by a certain scandanavian site that believes in a non-DRM world.
It's a great program for anyone, whether you go to Walmart or your keyboard for movies. Does wonders with compression to shrink your video files down with no real lose in quality. Been using it for along time now for my mogul, ipod and now TP2.
When I did actually convert real DVDs, I used.....the program that has a fox's head on the icon. I tried an even dozen, it was always the best. Hasn't been in my PC image for a long time now, but maybe someone else will know what I'm talkin about.
UPDATE: read the rest of the thread, looks like others have used the foxhead as well, which jogged my memory.
http://www.slysoft.com/ FTW!