So in a perfect world, I could select Burn to Blu-ray in the DVD Architect Studio, and I'd have to have a Blu-Ray DVD Burner in my computer and then it would play on a Blu-Ray DVD player connected to my TV in full 720p?

Correct... you would need a Blu Ray burner and a Blu Ray player to see things in 720p hidef. The previous poster's comments were correct: DVD standards are "stucK" at 480i.

A couple options you might not have considered:

1) Upconverting DVD player: Burn a standard DVD and play it in a "1080p upconvert" DVD player connected to your TV. This can look pretty good if the original source material is high quality. These cost something like $70-$80 these days.

2) Look at something like the WD TV product from Western Digital. It will play high-def files up to 1080p straight off a USB hard drive or flash drive, and it supports a wide range of file formats that Vegas can produce. WD TV is about $100, which is a lot cheaper than a Blu Ray burner, discs and Blu Ray player.

There is one more option - render the project in the same format as the source (720p) and transfer it back to your camera.

For example, I have Canon HV20, and when I am done with all editing (original HDV footage + pictures) I render the project in HDV format (1440x720, 29.997fps, .m2t file). After that I use "Print to HDV tape" option to transfer the edited footage back to the tape on my camera. I watch all my movies in HD by simply connecting the camera to my HDTV - no need for a Blu-Ray. Also, when we are visiting our friends, I bring the camera with me and show them our movies in HD, too - so it doesn't matter if they have Blu-Ray or not.

<<Upconverting DVD player: Burn a standard DVD and play it in a "1080p upconvert" DVD player connected to your TV. This can look pretty good if the original source material is high quality. >>
I think my DVD player is one of these - how do i make it all upconvert - is there a particular type of render i need to use to get the DVD player to attempt the upconvert or is it all automatic?

Somewhere in the setup options of your DVD player is a setting for output resolution -- that is, if it really is an upconverting DVD player. I have an Oppo 983 and it lets me select the standard 480i on the front panel, or upconvert to to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. I leave it at 1080p 100% of the time. Any and every DVD I put in there gets upconverted.
One other thing about Blu-rays mentioned in previous post. I don't know if it is possible to burn 720p to Blu-ray. I think is is only 1080i or 1080p. If that is the case, you'd have to render at 1080 and let the Blu-ray player or the TV convert to 720p. Could be wrong, but I've never heard of 720 Blu-ray material.

In the olden days (a year or two back!) I just rendered the HDV to mpeg2 (m2t) at 1080i and saved the file as a data DVD. You get 20 minutes on a standard (not dual sided) DVD. Stick it into a PS3 and your playback is at full 1080, nil discernible difference on a 70" HDTV between the original HDV tapes played from the camera and this PS3 playback. I assume that the new BluRay players can also play these m2t data files. But this is now my ancient solution. The DVDs could hold only 20min 1080HD and the PS3 could read external USB drives only with FAT32 formats, not NTFS. FAT32 is limited to 4GB partitions and a max file size of 4GB, similar to a standard DVD.

New solution: WD-TV connected to a terabyte drive! About $250 for the two. My 1080 HD files can now be of unlimited length, and ALL of them are instantly accessible via a tiny remote control. Recently added a second terabyte. The WD-TV seems to be a lot more friendly to more video formats than the Iomega I bought initially. Still escapes me why we need so many video formats/codecs...

So far PS3 is the only blu-ray player supporting playback of m2t files that I know of. I am waiting for its price to drop, or for the first blu-ray player under $200 that has this feature.

I don't see much need for WD-TV just to replace what I can playback directly from my camera. But if you can't playback from you camera (like HDV footage), maybe yes - this is a good solution.

Michael, I am now a retiree and I assure you that the most valuable movies you and your family will end up with (assuming you are not a a pro video producer) are your home movies and videos. I have hundreds of hours from recent going back to the early 1950s when my Dad got his first 8mm camera, through 16mm and Super 8 to videos; various video formats ending with HD1080. Issues with using a camcorder for archiving and playback: the formats are constantly changing and Sony (and the whole industry) quickly abandoned some (all?). Eg I have a beautiful Sony that uses MicroMV tapes. Anyone recalls this camcorder format? VHS? VHS-C? 8mm analogue tapes? Digtal 8? Then NTSC and PAL (I owned both when I lived in different parts of the world). I get the feel that every time one of my camcorders gave up, I had to replace it with a new one that had yet a new format. The latest are of course AVCHD. Even mpeg2 HDV tapes may disappear within a couple of years. And when its time comes, I will be replacing my HDV tape camcorder with an AVCHD, and so I will not be able to play back those HDV tapes in-camera any more. So, following 60 years of experience with home movies, I have concluded that the best archiving currently available is on terabyte drives, playback by WD-TV. I back up the hard drives, of course. As everyone knows, hard drives fail. I have little faith that BD will survive long. Commercial movies have become so much easier to download than to await a physical plastic disc through snail mail, home video is so much simpler to save on a hard-drive than burn on a BD or a DVD. Most PCs, even the little cheapo netbooks, will happily copy a GB per minute from one external USB terabyte drive to another for back-up, no need for feeding in new blank BDs. So it's a simple matter of doing an overnight run to back-up hundreds of gigabytes. Backing up that much to DVDs or BDs (or camcorder tapes) will take days! By the way, luckily I had transferred all my 16mm, 8mm and Super 8mm films to VHS back in the 1980s. Try locating a working 8mm or Super 8mm projector these days! This year I digitised all the VHS tapes while VHS players are still available. Now all are instantly available via that WD-TV. Did the same with all my photos, also instantly available. By the way, it's not practical to scan thousands of photo negatives and slides at home. Far too slow. Try your local Walmart or similar mass photo finishers and get them to put the files on CDs. I managed to negotiate a 60% discount by foregoing prints. They cannot charge you more than for making 4x6" prints anyway :-)

I have little faith that BD will survive long. Commercial movies have become so much easier to download

samirkharusi,
You make a lot of valid points and I appreciate your wisdom. But let me argue a point with you. Downloaded HD movies have drawbacks that will take several years to overcome. And thus ensures BD will survive at least another 5 years. Maybe 10.

1. Downloaded movies are heavily compressed and therefore of a lower video quality.
2. The accompanying HD soundtracks are not available with the download. There's nothing sweeter sounding than a lossless 5.1 soundtrack that comes on the BD. Not to mention all the extra video material on the discs.
3. Not too many people have Internet connected to their TVs.

Granted, those limitations will eventually be overcome as bandwidth increases. But movies-over-the-Internet surpassing BD will also require most of the population to acquire appliances that stream content directly to their TVs. And THAT will take at least 5 years. In the mean time, BD will overtake DVD as the format of choice.

So I think it will take 5 years for download technology match the quality of BD and to spread to the populace, and then another 5 years for BD to wind down as it is gradually overtaken by downloaded movies. That's 10 years of a stable movie format, which in this day and age is a lifetime.

"I don't see much need for WD-TV just to replace what I can playback directly from my camera."

For me the reason for doing this even though I could playback from camera are:
- Remote control: My camera does not have one, so running back and forth to the camera between clips is no good
- More capacity: As mentioned elsewhere here, you can attach a large disk drive to the WD TV and have a lot of footage at your fingertips. With the camera you are limited to onboard capacity.
- Playback of edited movies: I like to be able to quickly play back my edited movies created in Vegas. For some cameras, duplicating the formats that can be played from onboard memory can be difficult, and also replicating the file structure and indexing required can be nearly impossible. (I know this from experience with some Canon cameras.)
- Another small consideration is that many cameras require a somewhat expensive cable to hook to your TV; might as well spend that money on a WD TV or similar product!

I don't know anyone who has a BD player but lots of folk seem to be buying cheap upscalers. I have to say that this is a very good way to watch standard DVDs. I was surprised at the quality.