[dat720]

if you want just the movie another option could be smart ripper, it is capable of just ripping the movie and remuxing it into either multiple vobs or 1 single vob

mencoder can be abit full on but its results can be awesome as it is extremly flexible and supports a ton of codes, if you use a gui it is much easier, automen, megui and media coder are all good examples

again do some research and play around and find a combination of programs you are happy with...... asking questions doesnt really teach you anything, trailing different methods will teach you what works with your setup and what doesnt

and changing the extension of a vob to a mpg does not make it a mpg, it is still a vob file, vob is a container format, as is mpg avi wmv mkv ogg, and anything else i can't/too lazy to think of right now

a container is exactly what the name suggest's, for instance a vob file can have a .m2v mpeg2 video stream and a .ac3 dolby digital stream inside it, the player weather it be hardware or software demuxes the container and play's the streams inside it, your tivo is able to playback mpg containers but may not like the vob container, when you rename a vob to a mpg it is still a vob just renamed to a mpg, it still contains all the vob info which is why your tivo may not like it very much your best bet would be using something like smart ripper or tmpgenc or some other software that could demux the vob to a mpg file.....