This was during an era where VHS was standard and DVD’s were just brand new at the time (before streaming sites existed). Chains like Blockbuster were booming back then with people renting movies or even TV shows for a fee but have to return them by an expected date, what happens is that in order to “keep” a copy, people would use a PC with disc burning software to burn the contents from that DVD onto a blank one.
Know those blank white DVDs? Basically those were used on storing a “pirated” disc for themselves before returning the rented copy back at the video rental store. When I was a kid, I remember encountering what clearly a pirated copy of The Prince of Egypt (so who ever pirated it kept the rented copy) since the disc art is crappy & low quality (it’s been printed then glued onto a blank DVD used for copying upon peeling it off).
During the vhs era I don’t think many had a dual tape device or a way to copy tape to tape so I think it was much more common to record from live TV than rentals. There are recreations of this on yt and elsewhere with old public domain shows and movies interlaced with commercials and trailers and stuff from the same time. DVD era I think it was a bit more popular to have a CD burner for music than DVD burner at first so people could rip DVDs easily enough with a reader but stored them on hard drives or heavily compressed on CD until DVD burners became more widely available and affordable.