HDV or AVCHD playback w/o a computer -- BluRay, etc??

I recently shot some HDV footage and was amazed how good it looked on our 720p projector. I have Core2Duo Mac and imported the 1080i footage, plugged in the projector to the DVI port and was really disappointed. What happened to the 3 dimensional quality of 1080!! I was watching the original uncut 1080 import.

Could it be that Apple's HDV to AIC conversion (the only way to edit the video without having the HDV native $1200 Final Cut Pro) reduces the quality THAT much?

I played a 2 minute clip: HV30 through component 1 and the 2GB AIC Quicktime (.MOV) file through DVI. This allowed for a true A/B. The MOV file looked ok. It'd make you say "nice video" but switch to the HV30 source and you'd say "wow, THAT is hi-def!"

As much as I love to edit our videos into mini movies, I may just have to go back to 1998 when I played video uncut. It looks THAT MUCH BETTER.

So question: whether its HDV tapes or AVCHD SD cards, what are some solutions for playback in the video's native format?

Can you burn the AVCHD files onto a DVD using Toast for Blu-ray playback? Currently Mac external Blu-ray burners are $600+, but Toast maybe able to just transfer the data SDHC to DVD??

Of course I can just stick with HDV and put the ol tape in too, but worry about wear if using a HV30 as a playback deck.