Kent - I haven't heard too much about SmartRipper. You say you have been using it with consistent and great results? What format do you save your videos in? Thanks for the help.
SmartRipper is a much older program (discontinued actually but you can still get it). It was one of the very first solid rippers to emerge onto the scene. I keep it around simply because it does what it was meant to do very well. It its purely a ripper, and doesn’t offer any recompression options. It rips in 'folder' mode, and I use Nero afterwards to put it back into an ISO. I like to use it because it offers stream processing (i.e. I can drop foreign language audio tracks), saving a small amount of space without changing any quality. It has movie-only/full disk modes as well - it even lets you pick/choose the individual programs/streams/chapters you want to rip if you ever needed to do something more complex (let's say ripping a DVD of a TV-series that 'movie mode' has trouble with, but you wanted to drop the menus, etc.). I do tend to prefer AnyDVD these days just because of how simple it is, however it does cost money, so for the freeware solution I would highly recommend SmartRipper.
I have used some other software over the years as well. The main point I'm stressing to keep everything in its original format - all I need to do is remove the encryption. To that end,
any program that lets you rip without recompressing will yield the same result. Approximately 128(@8gb/ea) dual-layer DVDs can fit on a single TB (in practice it's a lot more, upwards of 200). Player compatibility issues can be potentially solved by integrating a virtual DVD-drive (SlySoft, the company that makes AnyDVD has a great freeware virtual DVD drive). The ISO's can be 'mounted' into the virtual drive so your computer thinks the disk was put in a physical drive -- now any program that could play a real DVD can now play your ISOs. The challenge would be to integrate it with an on-screen guide, but I imagine there are solutions out there for people who have large DVD/blu-ray changers that are automated - it would work the same way, except with the virtual drive.
Again, as I have said earlier, this approach works very, very well for standard DVDs, but presents additional challenges when working with blu-ray disks.
Smartripper:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=SmartRipper+download