What is the difference between Panasonic High Quality DVD and AVCHD disc?

Hmm, I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll take a stab.

My guess is the high quality DVD is SD and the AVCHD disc is HD. I think some devices, such as the PS3, play AVCHD. I could be wrong though. I don't have a PS3, nor do I have an AVCHD camera...

ACVHD discs contain HD video but on a DVD disc - You cannot play them on DVD players but need a BD player (unsure if PS3 will suffice). Saves you the money of burning BD discs.

DVD is as Rob said is SD (720 X 480).

Birdcat and compiler.

I have a AVCHD Handycam, HDR-SR11. I burn AVCHD on regular DVD discsthat play on PS3 as well as Bluray players. I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Plus Pro pack. Only drawback is that I can't put menus on these. Results played on a High Def LCD are stunning!

Vid-e-o-man

Compiler -

You can burn AVCHD to standard DVD (not BD) that will play on most BD players, not standard DVD players.

Compiler -

BluRay is a HD disc format - Special discs, burners and players are required.

AVCHD on standard DVD's can use standard DVD burners on standard DVD discs - You still need a BluRay player (or PS3 from someone's prior post) to play them - they won't play on standard DVD players.

I have not compared the two but they have identical dimensions so I would imagine they would look the same - But as I said, I have not done the AVCHD discs, only BD,

The "High Quality DVD" software creates a DVD-Video disc from your HD video. That's a plain old standard definition DVD. If the Panasonic software does its job, this will be a high quality DVD, but it's still SD.

AVCHD is a format derived from the Blu-ray standard, but these days a separate entity. Sony, Panasonic, and others support this. Its primary purpose has been for camcorder recording, however, most Blu-ray players will play AVCHD on DVD or memory card (assuming they support a memory card slot). Again, AVCHD is not part of the Blu-ray spec, it's a separate thing. But just like most Blu-ray players will play DVDs and even CDs, though that's optional, they will also play AVCHD.

AVCHD on a DVD is a subset of the Blu-ray specification, with a few weird little differences, and some limitation. For example, a properly authored AVCHD DVD will require only a 2x DVD reader, so the limit is 18Mb/s for an AVC stream, rather than something like 38-40Mb/s for Blu-ray. For memory cards, the format allows a peak of 24Mb/s, but that's not legal for DVD (it probably plays fine on your PC, may might fail on stand alone BD players). Unlike Blu-ray, AVCHD doesn't support MPEG-2 or VC-1 video, and audio is usually regular AC-3. The file system used is UDF 2.5 or 2.6, same as Blu-ray, so such discs will be unreadable on older PCs.

Sony does support AVCHD on the PS3 and on their BD players, Panasonic is another big proponent. Sony, in particular, has been a major proponent of AVCHD on DVD for camcorders, so it's no surprise they'd want players to support this -- the primary reason consumers buy DVD camcorders is the ability to play the discs without editing.