Need help with Converting TV Shows after ripping them.

[wade7575]

I want to be clear first off I'm not asking for help with anything illegal.

A friend of mine downloads tv shows from a certain website and a lot of times the episodes are 1280x720p and the megabyte size is around 180 to 320mb for a 40 to 48 minute tv show episode and they are crystal clear quality from the sites release group.

I however buy a lot of DVD's and box set's when I found stuff I want to watch,what I was wondering is does anyone know what software the release group might be using to get such a small megabyte size and yet still be able to have it at an aspect ratio of 1280x720p or 1280x640p and it still be crystal clear.

I'm wanting to be able to reencode my DVD's tv shows to a similar size to keep for storage on bigger hard drives that I have.