Fantastic burner. Sony still makes the best ones, IMO. I've had mine for about a year and a half now (different model, of course) and burned countless discs on it, none of which went bad due to the drive. Others here have had negative things to say about it, but that's just what you get with products like this.

As for making an MPEG, did you mean how do you make one out of the WMV or out of the original DVD?