You can author DVDs!

I got a copy of Tovid the other day. I'd heard that it was pretty much the easiest DVD authoring package for Linux, and that on the default settings it creates fully compatible DVDs.

I decided to use the GUI as opposed to the CLI version (the CLI was recommended to me) and, barring an Xorg crash (which could have been, and probably was, due to something else), it all worked fine. I tried the resultant DVD in my Samsung combi, and it worked well except for one particular video which had stuttery sound at the beginning. Unusual. I also tried on my very-finiky LG recorder combi, and even that video worked brilliantly.

There was one problem: The menu didn't seem to work when there were very long filenames in the videos. Take out those long filenames or replace them with shorter ones, and everything was fine.

You don't get a lot of control over the menus, but the amount of control is sufficient to create home DVDs with background pictures, background audio, thumbnails, submenus etc. I'm happy with the result, and this ticks the final "Linux can do all I want of it" box!