My method is still DVD to WMV9 with WMA9 Professional 5.1 Audio :
http://www.microsoftusernetwork.com/mcored.
However since Nero Recode started supporting AVC I am tempted to backup DVDs to ND-MPEG4 AVG. The major downfall of this is that you can only play it in Nero ShowTime and not in any other DirectShow compliant player.