The term "speed" means two different things in this case. When your DVD recorder asks what speed to record a program at what it really wants to know is how compressed you want the final disc to be -- more compression equals a smaller file size but an inferior picture. It uses the term "speed" because that's what we're familiar with from VHS. When you then go to dub a DVD off that original disc "speed" just means how fast you want the copy to be burned. You usually set that for as fast as your blank media can handle -- 4X, 8X, 16X, etc. Hope that helps.