I was giving the recommendation of H.264 over DivX more on the grounds of supporting the proper MPEG standard. If DivX Inc. shut down tomorrow, the format would likely quickly die soon after. Where as an MPEG supported format is at no risk of dying as there isn't a single company governing it.

I'm not saying that DivX Inc is going anywhere, but I think we have all seen the benefits of sticking to the more supported formats out there in audio (MPEG 1 Layer 3, IE MP3) over proprietary ones. A song I ripped in 1998 still plays on everything I own today. I want my video files to do the same. I have several older video files from 1998 that use Real codecs, or Indeo, and both formats there have pretty much been dead and are more and more difficult to play back. Compare that to an MPEG 1 video I have from the same era that still plays fine.

If I were putting the effort in to rip all my DVDs to a format, I'd want to do it in something that doesn't have me reripping them again down the road.