Hey DrHurricane,
I've converted a few movies from DVD to put on my axim, and normally they come out to be about 150-200mb depending on my settings... Here are the Programs I use...BTW you have to have a DVD drive in your laptop or Pc to use a DVD....
I use CladDvd to Rip the Dvd to my computer
CladDvd.Net
I use FlaskMpeg to convert to Mpeg
FlaskMpeg
And then I use VirtualDub to convert to Divx to then copy to PPC
VirtualDub
Ful instructions here
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/dvd/