Acceptable bitrate.
 

I am starting a new set not out yet, it's gonna take a while because there are so many episodes (100+) and they are aired totaly at random....it's gonna be a suprise :)

Anyway each show is a total of 43-45 minutes with the commercials cut, of course I want to use as few disks as possible without sacraficing quality.

The resolution will be 720*480
Audio bitrate will be 224

If I put 4 shows on a disk the bitrate will be 3159, is this acceptable? or should I just put 3 shows for a bitrate of 4288...will there be a tremdous difference?

I am asking because I recorded them at max quality, now I have removed the comercials and I am going to re-encode them, I would like to have the bitrate set for the encoder so I know how many per disk. thanks

Bitrate dictates the length of video.
The ratio of bitrate to resolution dictates the quality.

Optimal settings:
720x480 7000-9000k VBR
352x480 3500-4500k VBR
352x240 1500-2000k VBR

Maximum compression, quality will already start slight degrading:
720x480 5500-6000k VBR
352x480 2200-3000k VBR
352x240 1000-1200k VBR

Therefore, all of your suggestions are bad. Reduce resolution down to 352x480. That resolution is still at or above most sources you'll be using, including VHS, satellite, cable and broadcast antenna.

For the most part, you can never put more than 3 hours on a DVD. You can do up to 4 depending on hardware, and the nature of the source. Unless you're using LSI chips, or had high quality uncompressed AVI sources encoded with Procoder, and then it's cartoons or low-action live material, forget about 4 hours per DVD.

If you do 4 eps @ 45min (3 hours), with 352x480 resolution, and a VBR of 3400k (including audio), 3700k max and 0k min, you should be fine. If using TMPGEnc, then specify min of 1000k.