I want to try making my own dvds with menus, etc. from current short-lived series. any recommendations on software? thanx staffino

For beginers TMPGEnc DVDAuthor (TDA) is good, very simple and easy to work with. You can create your own menus in say Photoshop and import them into TDA.

When I first started, I downloaded a few programs & my two favorites were Nero & DVD-Lab. Initially, I found I liked Nero better but I found I quickly outgrew it & now I almost never use it. The nice thing about it is it converts NTSC to PAL & vice versa. But unless I need to do that, I now stick with DVD-Lab. In MY experience, I'd say Nero is much more simple to use & has some nice canned themes. But DVD-Lab allows you much greater flexibility. JMO. YMMV.