Here are some results I've had with DVD Authoring/Burning. I captured a VHS video to my pc and tried authoring/burning it with Vegas Video. It took 3 to 4 hours to do a 25 minute move, and the movie wouldn't play on my Onkyo CPD500 player. After fighting it for two days, I decided to have my dad try to play it on his APEX DVD player. It worked great. (Oh. I'm burning it to DVD+RW's for my testing) Then I noticed that my new Liteon 851s came with Sonic MYDVD, so I decided to load it on the PC and try it out. It only took 25 - 30 minutes to render and burn, and it will play on my CPD500 with some jittering, but again played great on my dads DVD player. So, I have learned that I will burn my movies to -R media (I only use RITEK), and I will use the Sonic MYDVD for rendering and burning, and only use the expensive software for doing major editing.
Bigger isn't always better, and it pays to try playing your DVD's in different players. This has been a major learning experience...