how good are burnt dvd's?

you have to consider the individual movie per se. there are programs available for dvd ripping (ie...dvd shrink, dvd decrypter, and so on). that being said, the majority of major releases are on dvd-9 dics. however, dvd-r are a dvd-5. the difference?? dvd-9 is 9+ gb while dvd-5 is 4.7 gb. hence, you must shrink the movie to fit to fit it on the dvd-5. the best way to do this is to completely strip out all the menus, special features, subtitles, and different audio languages. really, have you ever watched lord of the rings in portuguese? back up quality of 70% or more is pretty indistinguishable from the original. i've seen backups that were about 55% of the original. not too bad, but some scenes were a bit overly pixelated. i'll agree with gunbei....taiyo yuden discs are amongst the best available. check afterdawn.com forums for further info on backing up your dvds.

Well, you may go to jail or get a HUGE fine...don't tell everyone what you are doing?

Dave

It depends if they're DOWNLOADING movies and burning them. Are they ripping the DVD and compressing it into some DiVX or MPEG format then reburning it? It's probably likely that it's a DIRECT COPY burn just like on CDs. Quality... you won't be able to tell the difference if so. If it's downloaded, yes but the quality is QUITE impressive if it's a 700-1.5 gig MPG/DIVX compressed movie. The more you compress/change formats the lesser the quality will be. This also takes a long time. Chances are, they're doing direct copies.

Basically what Kgturner said. But whether you can tell a difference or not would be entirely subjective. If the movie itself fits perfectly into a single-sided DVD-R then it should be the same. But theoretically, if your compression rate is 90% of the original, it can't possibly be the same as the original. Many blockbuster action films tend to be bigger in size and if you like the movie, they'll be worth buying.