I think HCenc/HCgui should be added in the MPEG2 encoding section. In all serious tests and discussions over the last few years, it performs as well as CCE and TMPG, and it's free. I've tried it quite a lot myself, and at high bitrates I couldn't differentiate at all between the lossless .avi and the HC-compressed .m2v file. HC is also supposed to beat CCE hands down at low bitrates (although I don't have first-hand experience with that).
Also, MeGUI should be the recommended choice for xvid or h264 preview file purposes. It features a solid ffmpeg base and some great avisynth tools (deinterlacing/-combing, anamorphic flags and the like). As a nice bonus it's even pretty intuitive compared to the Byzantine mazes that are most open source windows video tools, like HCenc, Besweet or Avanti.