I'll fall in behind Don, however it's a big set of footsteps to follow. 
The verbatim media is good quality, as well as Sony and Taiyo Uden. Don't concern yourself with the price-of-the-disc when you're striving to produce a disc that everyone can play. Once you find a media that works well, don't settle for anything less.
I'll add a list that works well for me:
Sony -R media, burned at no faster than 8X.
Don't use stick-on labels, they cause readability problems.
Create your Video_ts folder in Studio, then burn your video in Nero. Nero has some extra settings to ensure compatability, and verifies the disc.
No more than 2 hours on a disc, however one hour would be better.
Try to keep your menus to a single page, the multi page ones sometimes cause more problems.
Visually inspect the back of the discs for a uniform burn, any sign of imperfections are actually just that.
If disc space is not a concern, capture in the dv/avi format. It makes the editing process work better, and seems to help out in the end. Just in case you didn't know it already, you can work with any type of file on the timeline. When you create your DVD video, the file will be encoded to .mpg at that time.
Just some simple suggestions, and feel free to ask any questions you have.