AVCHD Upgrade for PC DVD Drives?

[J. Stephen McDonald]

Is there an upgrade that would enable a standard DVD drive to play AVCHD-recorded HD-video disks and also to record AVCHD on standard DVDs? Is there a good DVD-authoring program that anyone would recommend that would accomplish this? Is a Blu-Ray drive the best way to even play AVCHD DVDs on a PC? Now that HD-DVD stand-alone recorders are being recalled, this way of recording AVCHD DVDs is disappearing as well. Toshiba and Canon both introduced such models, like the RD-X7, but they apparently have been canceled. Sony's low-cost little AVCHD-DVD recorder, the VRD-MC5 ($180. at B&H), doesn't seem to accept an HDV input and has no playback function. It takes inputs from AVCHD camcorders (HDD, DVD and Flash) and puts them on standard DVD disks, which are playable on Blu-Ray devices. It also takes DV and analog inputs, which it re-records in the standard DVD format. With an HDV camcorder, I would want some way to transfer its output to AVCHD DVDs, as an alternate and lower-cost means for distribution.