Video Codec Shootout:
"There are a great many considerations when it comes to digital video -- such as streaming capabilities, server software and processor load, and licensing costs for packaged media -- that are of more concern to businesses than home users. For the most part, we're not going to focus on these enterprise-oriented issues.

Rather, this is an article for those who want to compress video for home use: to e-mail to family members, put up on a Web site, burn onto a CD, re-compress to fit on a PDA or portable video player, or just archive for later use. Our focus is on middle-of-the-road bitrates suitable for download or CD archives, not extremely low bitrates for streaming over the Internet or very high bitrates for DVD-ROM based packaged media. "

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,1583,a=121163,00.asp