What should I know before buying a DVD-burner?

[jgl24]

I would like to buy a DVD-burner for my home computer.
My computer is VERY fast and I have spare IDE and SCSI
controllers.

My problem is that I don't know what to look for in a
DVD burner. I want to be able to create DVDs that will
be as standard so as to be playable in almost all stand-
alone DVD-players.

What kind of media will I have to buy and what are the
price differences between the different types? (DVD-RW,
DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, etc.)

What authoring software is recommended also (cheap)? I
want to at least be able to put menus on it. I have a
trial version of SpruceUp, but that doesn't do much for
me.

[VerbatimDVD]

DO NOT BUY DVD RAM AT ALL. Dvd-ram cannot be played in standalone DVD players

[Darkbird]

VerbatimDVD is right, stay away from DVD-RAM. It doesn't work for DVD-Video in set-top players and the media is expensive.

DVD+RW drives are not yet on the market, should come out later this year, Oct/Nov.

The overall success rate that I've heard for DVD-R discs in various set-top players is about 90 to 95 percent.

Pioneer recently announced a drop in their retail pricing of DVD-R discs down to USD9.99. DVD-RW discs are usually 150 to 200 percent of the cost of DVD-R discs.

The North American version of the Pioneer DVR-A03 comes with MyDVD from Sonic. It does menus, but I don't think it supports AC3 (dolby digital) sound, just PCM (wave) sound. Sonic also makes DVDit in several levels that do support AC3, but I can't quote any prices.