DV -> DVD vs. DivX question

[kyotov]

I recently bought a MiniDV CamCorder and I recently became a father.

These two in combination are filling up my harddrive very fast.
A single MiniDV tape is about 15GB (25MBits/sec).

I am thinking about archiving these somehow and right now I cannot deside: should I make the DV AVI files MPEG2 or should I use DivX (MPEG4) with a similar bitrate.

I have DVD burner, so 8 MBits/sec is not much an issue for me, but 25 is. My question is: at 8Mbits/sec which is better DVD or DivX?

[UncasMS]

since viewing dvd from a standalone is much nicer than connecting a pc/notebook to your tv/vcr i'd go for the DVD option

and btw 8Mbit would be WAY TOO MUCH for divx
1000kb will give you good looking results; more than 2mbit will hardly ever be needed for mpeg4/divx

[kyotov]

Thanks for the reply!
Let me clarify a little bit.

These are raw DV files, which I have not edited yet. I don't currenly have the time to do the editing, but eventually one day I will (although it might be when I am 60).

My idea is to preserve the quality as much as possible, so that I will have something nice to start my productions with when I decide to.

I do not intend to watch those movies very much in this form - I just need backup.

While DivX achieves remarkable quality at 1-2 MBits/sec, it is still worse than DVD. And in fact DVD is quite lossy also...

So my question stands, although it is a bit expanded now:
1. What is the maximum bitrate of DivX which makes sense (i.e. no visible loss of quality at that rate, no matter what the motion is)?
2. At that rate, is it higher quality than DVD MPEG2 @ 8MBits/sec
3. Do I have a third option?

Ideally I would like to preserve as much of the raw DV quality as possible, but shrinking the size from 25Mbits/sec.

Thanks!!!