converting toshiba 34 dvds to xvid/divx etc, problems

[stolt]

I transferred my camcorder tapes via dv in on a toshiba rdsx34 standalone dvd recorder onto dvd, I now have a i-station pvr type thing and I need to convert these dvds to avi/div/xvid, are there any programs that anyone can reccomend that they have used, from another forum i tried dvdx but i'm having problems with the home dvds saying it doesnt recognise the format... how can i find out what the toshiba has recorded them as? i would have thought that would be a standard encoding, they do play on the laptop fine just when i come to encoding them....

any advice I;m at a lost, ive tried several software programs and I'm not having much luck...

thanks

rob