I have a nec2500 a using dangerous brother 1.07 firmware patch.
I usually rip with DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink depending what mood I am in. However I did find problems with the NERO plug in. Whereby if you create an image the way it writes it to disk makes my hardware player search a lot for its data (no degridation just annoying noise !). To any new Authoring people I would fully recommend outputting to a video TS folder and then going into nero, selecting create DVD video then manually dropping the files in. By using this method I have found hardware players do not appear to go mad when reading the disks !!! I have also noticed that Bulkpaq disks can sometime freeze near the end of films or start going blocky. I try not to use these now. But if anyone has a shit load of Bulkpaqs they need to use I reccomend in DVD shrink dropdown the disk size from auto (4.7 GB) to custom and set it to say 4300. Then they seem to play alright.
If you are burning stuff for yourself I'd always go for Intenso -R x 4. Yes they will cost you 60p, but at least you can read them at a later stage. The 2500 is not the best of readers !!! Does anybody else have any handy hints for newbie and oldie users ? Oh yes if any of you copy copies then I would still run them through decrypter as its a lot qiuicker than cut and paste !