PowerDVD question

Hey, everyone, hope you can help me with this.

Remember the questions I asked awhile ago about how to do free screencapping? Well, I decided to break down and buy PowerDVD, but now I'm not so sure where to begin.

For one thing, I checked in the memories under screencapping, but I didn't find any entry that compared the various screencapping programs, and showed the advantages/disadvantages of each. I went to crumblingwalls' journal, because I know she uses PowerDVD, and found out from this tutorial that the file sizes are huge, and that you need to compress them using another program. However, I really only want to be using one program, because I'm just getting started.

I then went to the PowerDVD website, but there are a few versions that they have, and I'm not sure which one is the best for screencapping. Really, I'd prefer something reasonably priced with reasonably competent screencapping, rather than uber-expensive/uber-good-capping.

So basically what I'm asking is:

-Are there any other programs that you guys feel are better than PowerDVD?
-If not, what version of PowerDVD do you think is best for someone who doesn't want to spend too much money, but still wants good caps?

If you could help me, I'd be really grateful.

Thanks in advance,

anolinde