I'm interested in purchasing a dvd burner and would like a cram
course on all the different blank dvd formats that are on 
the market. What is the best to look for? What is the best quality?
What is the price difference? And what do all those letters RW-+ etc mean.

You may find the answer to this similar question very helpful:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=255010

Please see some reviews DVD burners before buying one

This web site has a lot and a very good reviews:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdwriters

And also here:
http://www.pcmag.com/search_results/0%2C2426%2C%2C00.asp?qry=DVD&filterapp=+AND+sectionhierarchylist%3A1473&site=3


I think that these days SONY has the best products in this area
because it the most reliable, quiet, and has a great "buffer underrun
protection" that help
you burn DVD with no errors, it also cost a little more than others
but it worth it and the new SONY drives also support dual layer (up to
8.5GB of data)

Check it out here:
http://www.sonyburners.com/products/product_detail.php?ID=2039743887


Important:
Some DVD media is not working "good" with some drives, for example, I
burned data DVD+R with my SONY DRU 700A on a "Prenco" DVD+R media, and
I could only read it on the DVD burner drive (not on other DVD-ROM
drives), and what I found is that the Prenco media is not fully
compatible with the DVD+R regulations - when using SONY or Verbatim
media it works great on all drives... so it's very important to use
the DVD maker recommended media

See what sony has to say about this:
http://www.sonydigital-link.com/osd/media/700/english/700.html


+
Another thing you may want to do is to make your DVD a "region free"
DVD so you can see movies from all regions without being locked after
5 changes like most computer DVD players will do (in the hardware)

so what you need to do is to check if the DVD you going to buy can be
updated to be "region free" - just search for the model number that
you want to buy in this web site:
http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php
(it also has a great forum about DVD burners)


+
DVD-R is a DVD media format made to work with some companies like:
Pioneer, Toshiba, Panasonic and and a couple of other companies

DVD+R is a DVD media format made to work with some companies like:
Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Ricoh and (until recently) Sony...

Check out "DVD writer: Plus or Minus?" for the complete article:
http://peripherals.about.com/cs/cddvdcdwriters/a/aa062303a.htm

And also on google:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=DVD-R+minus+plus&btnG=Google+Search

Don't forget to tip me if I saved you some money :-)