The whole process of creating a DVD is much more complicated than VHS. With VHS, the film is transferred to a master and dupes are basically made from that. With DVD, the video and the audio are compressed (separately) and menus are created by graphics houses. The video, subtitles, and audio are put back together again with the menus in a process called "authoring". Authoring DVD's takes time; it's also where all of the navigation is programmed into the disc. Then, like VHS, everything has to be QC'ed, which is another time-consuming process. Replication isn't a sure thing, either. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get a good stamper. It's alot more complicated to make DVD's--most people just think that you record it linearly like a VHS tape or CD-R. Nope. So many people are involved, I'm amazed that DVD's don't cost more!