imovie basics

Ok - I'm totally green with regards the technicalities of Video editing...

And my current needs are very basic - not at all 'creative' !

I have several 'TV Serial' (Episodes) DVDs and I want to be able to view them from a very basic menu choice - with none of the rigmarole that goes with the official release - and in some cases editing out the 'previously on...' and 'next week on...' trailers that just do my head in.

From what I can see iMovie allows me to do that kind of editing and... create menus to view the content.

Ok - so I've figured that first of all I need to rip the DVD... sorted WinX seems to be able to do that.

But when I try to import the ripped MPEG file into iMovie - it doesn't like it...

Looks like I need to convert the MPEG to MP3 - but aren't I loosing quality at that point?

I want to view on a reasonable sized TV - not a mobile device.

Is there a lossless conversion option?

I'm at my limit with the tech speak, (I'm a silver surfing dinosaur), and i just feel I may be chasing my own tail and barking up the wrong tree here - maybe there's a simpler route to achieve this.

Just looking for assurance that I'm heading in the right direction or a pointer to a better one.