FWIW, I currently burn a few AVCHD 'hybrid' discs i.e. burning the AVCHD in its native format on a standard DVD. As far as I can see, apart from it being on a standard DVD instead of a Blu-Ray disc, the structure burned to the disc is Blu-Ray compliant. It creates a BDMV folder with a number of sub-folders within that folder, including the Stream sub-folder which actually contains the AVCHD files. And they play fine in the Sony PS3 which is of course a Blu-Ray rated player. I would have thought it would do the same thing if you actually used a Blu-Ray disc instead of a standard DVD.
Re 6: I certainly agree. In fact, I cannot understand why this could not have happened right from the start. As you have probably also found, Make Movie Templates Manager cannot even create an AVCHD template which is another major oversight as far as I am concerned. And it's certainly one which I hope is covered in VS12.
As a footnote to the latter, since 95% of the video I am burning to my AVCHD hybrid discs is in fact HDV format, I do my editing as normal. But then, when editing is finished, I do not, as I normally do with other formats, convert it in the Editor to AVCHD using the silly VS11.5+ default (and only) AVCHD settings (Share > Create Video File > AVCHD).
Instead, I go straight to Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. This opens the burning module and automatically inserts my *project* file into the burning timeline as is. Then I click on the second icon in the bottom left of the burning screen and select 'Change MPEG settings'. I can then select AVCHD settings which suit me far more than the default VS ones. For instance, instead of using the VBR max 15000 kbps bitrate set by VS, which I find too low in final quality, I select CBR 16800 or 17000. (The former gives me leeway for a couple of extra minutes of video, given that using 17000 kbps will only give me around 20 minutes of AVCHD on a standard single layer DVD. Quite a number of my projects go just over that limit, no matter how much I edit and break up larger projects to fit within the hybrid disc limitations.)
Using that workflow, I can ignore the 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' box (i.e. whether it is ticked or not) since what I have inserted in the burning timeline is still only in project HDV/mpeg-2 format, and thus not a compliant AVCHD/mpeg-4 file. But if you are using AVCHD files ab initio and actually insert real AVCHD in the burning timeline, you would probably need to un-tick the 'Do not convert' box. This would mean that your files are re-converted to the same properties during the burning process, and thus both significantly extend the time frame and also cause the usual loss of quality inherent in any recoding of the lossy mpeg format. But I am of the view that if you are only recoding once, and maintaining the original high quality settings, any loss of quality will be extremely minimal, and not detectable to the naked eye.
Using the default VS AVCHD settings, on the other hand, inevitably leads to significant and very detectable loss in quality!
