When I make a DVD-R the disc automatically starts playing the first title when inserted into any dvd player. The only way to get the menu screen is to press the Menu button on the DVD Player remote control during playback. Obviously I would like the DVD menu to be displayed to show the contents of the disc when the disc is loaded rather than start playing the first title.

Is there any way I can do this?

I don't think there is unfortunately. I find that on some DVD players the first title plays automatically, and on others nothing happens till you press play or menu. Also, the titles play one after the other automatically, whereas on commercial DVDs you are usually returned to the menu after a title has played.

I can live with this though, as it's not really designed to produce flashy feature-packed interactive DVDs, but merely to archive stuff. However, I would like a few more menu designs, or at least the facility to display thumbnail slots to match the number of titles recorded - e.g. if you have five titles, you will have a blank thumbnail window if you use the 3 or 6 per page menus, or 3 blank windows if you use a 4 per page menu. I really am nit-picking though and now I've learned that the title names are displayed in two rows of 20 characters, I can now stop these looking messy.

Playback of the menu or title is decided by the player ,not the recorder.
There are reauthoring tools on PC software to force it it,but that kind of defeats the object

Not sure I totally agree that it is the player Mongo; both my dvd players play DVDs recorded from my 433 automatically as Steed suggests without going to the menu page, but if I play a commercially recorded DVD they always go to the menu first. So it must be the way the DVD is recorded that causes this situation.

I might try 'DVD shrink' and analyse what is happening.

I have a Pioneer recorder and a separate Pioneer player.
While discs inserted in the recorder(that it recorded itself) play the movie,the Pioneer player I have always plays the menu.
Commercial dvd's are authored differently so the menu,along with warnings etc can be forced to play first.
As I said above,some PC authoring tools can also let you adjust this,but without it,the player decides