"Best" format for DVD's and archiving

seems like there's lots of opinions here, so maybe this will turn into a poll. i've been using DVD SP4 for a few months now and really like it but have run into some bugs lately which are making me rethink my processes. out of FCP, i've been mostly using their canned codecs, mainly the "best-90min" one, but have also made my own higher res ones (7mbps avg, with 8.5 max), but always only us Dolby 2 (ac3) audio.

other guys are mentioning making self-contained QTs, or using Compressor with A-Pack...and now i read today that there might be bugs in Compressors' 2-pass codecs! hadn't heard that one before today, so maybe that's why i'm getting some corrupted files, which are causing SP4 to crash.

any thoughts? looking for ideas on best quality, "universal" playability, ease of archive, etc.

thanks for helping out a bonehead,

jtn