I see your in the UK.

PC World have an offer at the moment where you can get 10 ,Packard Bell, DVD +R and +RW or -R and -RW for £20 ish, you would normaly pay close to this for 5 I dont think they will have it on much longer though so I would get as many as you can afford.

As to which type of media you can use it will say on you box that the DVD writter came in what it can play it will either be +R or -R if it says it can only use the + ones that is all you can use, likewise if it says it uses the -R then that it all it can use. You might get lucky and it will be able to use both.

Although the -R DVD's are marginally cheaper at the moment the +R will play on almost anything PS2, X-Box most home DVD players.

However the main factor in getting them to play on a home DVD player is the software you use.

I use DVD Decrypter to Read the original DVD,
Then use DVD2ONE to strip the files and compress them so it will fit onto one blank DVD
Then use Copy to DVD to burn them. Copy to DVD works hand in hand with DVD2ONE so you will get better results if you use both of them.

It will take about 20-30 mins depending on you computer to copy a DVD.

You can google all of the mentioned software and download it for free. I think you need to register DVD2ONE to get the full functionality, but its not hard to find a serial number is it? ;-)