I'll be interested to see what replies you get to your question because, essentially I agree with what you are saying.

The only benefit of breaking the process that I can see is that, if there have been problems, then it allows you to troubleshoot things more easily.

p.s. by far the most demanding part of the whole process is rendering. Actually burning the DVD doesn't 'stress' the computer anywhere near as much.

I rarely have a problem burning a disc with PD. It is good to read the forums to gain knowledge. It is not good if it confuses you to read other users posts. If you don’t have a problem then don’t worry about it. You might have a slightly better computer than someone that have a particular problem. Don't you think so ...

Yes,
you CAN go directly from the timeline to the DVD.
However, for many years and several rebuilds of PD, this has been "conventional wisdom". Go ahead and burn from the timeline, but if you get a fail try rendering your file first, and THEN go to Create DVD with that new file. This seems to be a better route to go for marginal computers, I'm not smart enough to know why it's so. I think the user has to find what works, find that sweet-spot for their setup, and work with that. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

If you Burn to Folder only, you save disks. In case of a failure.

You can play the folder with a software player such as PowerDVD. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

That's true, Carl, and is the reason my DVD workflow is to render the final product file to check for mistakes in editing, then use that "perfect" media file in my DVD project. Then after all is complete, export both packages as PPM's, combined in the same folder for archiving. Duplicate media will be overwritten at the last step of that. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

When you render to an mpg and then create menus and burn disc from the mpg there is a loss in picture quality from original footage isn't there?

Is that just the cost of getting it to burn?

I personally do not see a visual degradation, and keep in mind a vob is an mpeg2 with a different extension so any rerendering would be minimal, but Id love others with a deep knowledge of this exact issue to add to this thread. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

VOB's are MPEG-2 files but with additional control information embedded in them. I don't think there is any way that the burning process would reduce the picture quality. I always think the most important thing is to maintain the resolution of the original footage or at least make sure that resolution is never increased and bit rate is kept as high as practicable/possible.

As I said previously, I think that burning to a folder is a good option for troubleshooting DVD creation problems, and DVD creation is only something I do now if I'm passing stuff on to someone who can't handle an mp4.