Do I need a certain type of hardware to burn a DVD onto a DVD-R or can I burn with just the Nero software?
For hardware you'll need a dvd burner - then you can use software like Nero to burn to a dvd. If it's a copy protected dvd you'll need to remove the copy protection with something like DVDFab HD Decrypter (free). Rip the dvd to your hard drive then open those files in Nero Recode to compress and burn to the DVD-R.