I just want to know what is the best quality movie download you have found: Avi, Mpg, etc., Height, Width?

XviD

The widest definition I've come across was over 500 pixels wide. I can't recall the specifics. The majority you find will be 320 x 240 (VCD dimensions) but there's also some odd ones out there. Some may be SVCD dimensions which are about 50% larger than VCD.

I use Div-X 5.2.1 to encode. It's much better than X-vid (files will be smaller with just as good or better quality. I have come across files on gnutella that are 2 cd x-vid (1300-1500 MB) where I have encoded exactly the thing with Div-X (650-1000 MB) with much better quality. By that I mean that not many would see the difference between my encoded file and a real DVD

Now DivX 6 is out. Haven't tried it yet, but have been told files will be even smaller with the same quality. If X-vid don't better their encodingsoftware it will be out-of-date. Not that X-vid isn't great quality, but the filesize is ridiculous.

most quality videos will be at least 570X270 and also they will be widescreen (very few quality videos are 4:3)

Certainly divX is much better than 3ivx as far as encoding goes. Much better playback fluency for a start let alone quality & size. For personal use, I found ZyGo to be very good. As good as DivX if not better. But it might depend upon particular file! ZyGo is freeware I think, as a 3rd party QuickTime component you can downld via QT. But my tests have been very positive generally as for size & quality & playback fluency. But I don't know. Overall DivX is more than likely prolly better.

I also haven't tried DivX 6, but it is only bound to be better than previous versions (saving for some bugs in some version releases.)

The current codec of choice is certainly H264 (or H.264):
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm

Just search for it and watch some examples. However, everybody uses MPEG-4 nowadays and all those codecs are just variants. So any of them is virtually as good as the others. As a rule of thumb expect at least 250 MB for 30 min. of video at good quality.

The resolutions depend on the source material of course. TV recordings (this means digital and usually HDTV nowadays) have a typical resolution of 640x480. If the source was a DVD it's 720x480. Random "clips" often still have only 320x240, the same applies to very old files (usually MPEG-1). The latter cannot really be "enjoyed". I'd only use it when picture quality does not really matter. One problem with older encodings is that they tend to show "blocks" which is really ugly. Modern MPEG-4 codecs don't have this problem, you can hardly tell it's digital if properly encoded.

Unfortunately, the filename itself seldomly tells anything about the quality. Sometimes the codec name is added to filename - of course this could be a lie/mistake. AVI can really be anything from custom codecs over outdated MPEG-1 to modern MPEG-4. If you're lucky, there's a Bitzi entry for it, otherwise look at the size, download a few megabytes and check its quality with your video player.
The same applies to MPG resp. MPEG. It's really just a container. It often is crappy MPEG-1 but recently I've noticed it's also used for MPEG-4 encoded files again. It can help to look at the alternate filenames. MP4 is the "official" filename extension for a MPEG-4 container and also
used.

MKV (Matroska Video) and OGM (Ogg Motion video) are also newer and popular container formats. They usually carry high quality video.

The largest resolution I've seen was some 1400x1024 file. The resolution may be misleading though. Depending on the encoding (especially the bitrate), the effective resolution might not be higher than 640x480. So it may look good but not as crisp as the real HDTV source - which may give you a false impression of HDTV. It requires a larger computer screen or HDTV monitor (a usual TV screen won't do) anyway, to see the difference between HDTV and a DVD.

I sorry but anything having to do with iTunes and iPod makes me run away screaming. Do you know that it is virtually impossible to download QuickTime without getting iTunes as well. I hate iTunes and iPods so much that I deleted both of my PC and installed a QuickTime alternative instead (One of the smarter decisions). It plays virtually anything, and supports all Codecs, If I can find it and install it, it will play, so now I have one mediaplayer for Video and WMP for music, saving me from a lot of grief.

If Apple wasn't the distributor of the iPod it would be classified as malware I think, and they are probably responsible for a large part of all the AdWare we download by mistake through P2P

Do you confuse efreeclub dot com with Apple by any chance?

lol it certainly looks that way. (a) autogenerated spam results, & of course (b) autogenerated mp3 spam results which showed up about 3-4 months ago.

I'm not sure where the heck iPod or iTunes comes into the equation of this thread. Spam is spam

Sorry
Maybe I jumped the gun there.

I can't get iTunes where I live. Meaning I can't buy songs that I want, So everytime I see iTunes it just reminds me of it.

I have to go through all the spam results hoping that just maybe I'll find what Im looking for. So iTunes actually in a way encourages P2P sharing. If they would let me buy, I probably would. He He maybe