Assuming you have a non copy protected DVD

I use Freemake to extract everything to a file all in one step. You can play with the Output formats and various resolution settings to your preference but it works well for me and once you press Go you only need to come back when it's finished - in fact if I specify the Output location as the Humax (or my NAS) I don't even need to copy the file at the end!!
The way I used to do it (pre-Freemake) was to use CloneDVD to extract the relevant VOB File, then VLC's convert option to make the .ts files. However I then encountered DVDs that only seemed to rip into 1GB chunks so I had to find VOBJoiner (free) to connect them up then onto VLC as before, but I hit some problems getting the resultant files to play. Plus there was the added steps involved in joining the VOB's which was why I moved onto Freemake which we found while looking for off the box video editors (before on the box was invented).
I don't bother with creating the additional files and they seem to play OK (with sufficient transport controls) for me.
As with most things in life it's nice to have a choice so there's a couple of equally good methods on here to play around with and see which one suits you best.
