Media Center has the capability to burn certain recordings to DVD. On one occasion when I tried this the system accepted my input but after some disk activity nothing happened. Media Center froze. I tried Ctl-Alt-Delete to reach task manager but it would not display in front of the Windows Media screen. I eventually learned to reduce the size of the Media Center screen using the middle icon at the top right of the screen. The left icon totally minimizes the screen, the right icon maximizes the screen, and the middle icon makes the screen about one-fourth size. This will allow you to bring up task manager and halt Media Center should it freeze.
After testing I found that the video also would not play. I tried creating the DVD using Windows DVD Maker (also part of Vista) and got a message that the video file was corrupt. Apparently although Media Center uses DVD Maker to create DVDs it does not pass some error messages from DVD Maker to the user. In case of problems use DVD Maker outside of Media Center to help locate the problem. Media Cente uses Media Player to play video files so you may wish to use it outside of Media Center should there be a problem with Media Center.
And trouble shoot Media Center when it is not in the full screen mode so that at least you can halt it without rebooting.