Handbrake is more a trial and error thing or better yet...your making into what comes as close to a DVD as possible and still be compressed. Nothing is perfect and more subjective. My 720p eye sees things just fine but your eye will see what is lacking. Try this info and have at it. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1200296
For my use (mainly streaming from a NAS) the AppleTV preset in Handbrake is just good enuf. Nothing beats the real thing (ie: uncompressed DVD) but if you look at, 400 movies and jewl cases and how to catalog and store it all neatly...fawk that. Currently 400 titles is 800 GB on a 2 TB NAS drive. All are tagged and have Poster art and comments with years acters and so-on. That has a real value, to me at least, that evens out a "lesser" quality.
Did I digress?
Play with it. And yes your i5 will do a hell-of-a-job on this stuff. Trancoding is a snak for that beast you have. My Q6600 takes about 15-20 min to rip and burn a full movie. and Handbrake transcodes in 30-40 min. And yes, I can still use my pc for other stuff at the same time.
