A topic came up earlier about archiving DVDs into a lossless format, and then converting them to a more portable format for playback specifically on VMC through a 360 extender (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/165412.aspx).

As I myself am just starting the process of converting VOB-to-WMV from my lossless archive (having gone the MPEG-2 route earlier and found its limitations), I'm curious to know about the tools people here might be recommending.

So far I've worked with RiverPast Video Cleaner (http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/vob/wmv.php) and YasaSoft Video Converter (http://www.yasasoft.com/tutorials/vobtowmv.htm).  Both have their pros and cons.

Can anyone recommend any good tools here, or things to watch out for?

I've had very nice results with the process on this page.  Works great, picture's beautiful, and it even encodes the movie to DD5.1 audio.    I wasn't too happy with the filesize at default settings (came out to 4-5 GB per movie, at 5Mb/s video.)  But, it wasn't too hard to edit the batch file to drop the bitrate a bit.  (I lowered it to 3Mb/s video, 192kb/s audio (per stream), and get a 1.8-2.5GB WMV out of it.)

It's crapware-free  (good!), and mostly free (as in )  Only (at last check) $25 US for the codec/WMP plugin to do it properly. 

Of course, you do need DVD Decrypter (which, sadly, is no longer available, if you don't have it.)  However, the batch file can be modded as needed if you have another rip program (so long as that rip program can do the rip to a single VOB file.)  I re-wrote it a little for my purposes (I do the rip on my desktop, and then upload the VOB files to an E6400 machine I have downstairs.  That machine can do the encode in around 4 hours.)

Check this out: http://www.videoredo.com/index.html

I convert all my vobs, ts files to Microsoft "dvr-ms" format that my Xbox 360 plays with ease and everything remains intact and conversion only takes about 10-15 minutes.

I gave up on .wmv because it just takes to convert for the quality I like.