Looks like an average DVD movie is ending up between 1-2GB. I'm usually using the AppleTV 2 presets for them in Handbrake. The extended release of the first Lord of the Rings movie on DVD turned into 3.2GB.

I don't personally have a home theater setup, and haven't for years at this point. Preserving 5.1 audio or other parts of the movie on disc hasn't been a focus of this conversion. Most everything I've transcoded has wound up with stereo audio only.

Long term if I do end up with a home theater setup again, I'll likely go with a different approach. One reason I resisted Plex for so long was their lack of supporting full disc images, which is how I was handling my DVD movies. My last home theater setup had a Mac Mini running the older Front Row, and it would play the disc images as if the physical DVD was in the system. Thus preserving the 5.1 sound that I had the setup for at the time.

Overall my goal with this is to ensure media I have paid for in the past is still playable nearly as easily as Netflix. Their rotating library results in some shows/movies I like disappearing from streaming at times.