Best Dvd/Cd Burner Software

As the topic says i would like your opinion on what is the best dvd/cd burner out there. You can include atleast 5 free and atleast 5 which you have to buy. I'm looking for products which are

[1] cost effective
[2] well known/popular
[3] easy to install and use
[4] have good writing speed , meaning i'm done in
less time
[5] doesnt take much space

Now why i'm in search of such softwares you may ask ??? Well i have been searching on google for over 2 days nows , downloading and testing many freewares and as their descriptions said "best programmes" but im not very happy with their performance. For instance i have used nero burning rom the latest version and i am trying to make a video cd with it, i'm copying a 750 mb movie onto the disc and 2 hours 13 mins have beed passed and its still going at 57% done ... I dunno if i did sumthing wrong (mayb didnt set it up correctly) but i have used burnquick in past and it used to burn a 750 data cd in less then 5 mins. I have a sony 32/10/40x cd writer and i am 100% its not becus of my cd writer that nero is taking this long .... I want to know do all of you guys who burn dvd's or vcd's to watch movies on ur home dvd players have to wasite so much time (2-3 hours) to burn them ??? Whats the fastest easiest solution to burn dvds/vcds . Thx in advance