What is the best format for me?

I'm a bit overwhelmed by number of formats and options.

I use a Sony DV camcorder and edit on a Mac (iMovie, plus I have QT Pro). I don't want to burn DVDs anymore. I'd like to encode my footage into some format that would allow me to:

1) store it on my computer (so size does matter),

2) view it on my laptop (with Front Row) and possibly on TV when I connect laptop to it (maybe Apple TV in the future),

3) optionally: be able to share it with people who don't use a Mac,

4) use these files to create some iMovie projects. I will also keep DV tapes for when I have time/care for maximum quality, but I might use encoded files for some edits.

5) this is all for home movies only.

What is the optimal format/settings for me?

Indeed the number of competing formats and codecs is currently a real minefield.

With storage so cheap these days I recommend you just keep the DV-AVI files for archive purposes. An hour of DV takes 13Gb so on a 500Gb disk you can store nearly 40 hours of footage. When HD-DVD and Bluray burning becomes mainstream that will be a good way to store raw DV-AVIs too.

If you really want to archive in a compressed format then there is an abundance of codecs and most of them offer great filesize reduction at quality very close to your original DV AVI file. WMV9, DivX, Quicktime, Xvid are all worthy examples. I use a PC so I don't know which of these, other than Quicktime of course, can be dropped into an iMovie project. I'm sure some of the Mac users here can give you near-lossless settings for Quicktime.

If you're talking about sharing on the web then I reckon Flash video encoded with the On2 VP6 codec is now a good way to go. Nearly all computers worldwide have the decoder to play that without an additional download and the quality is now very close to WMV, Quicktime etc.. Wagsy's had good results with this and my next batch of web movies will be in this format.