Perhaps it would be less for full 1920x1080,
It's the total average bit rate that determines this, not the framesize. Bigger framesizes requires higher bit-rates to retain quality because they contain more pixels (more information).
Actually this is interesting as to the future of High Defintion relating to Home Videos.
Right now if we shoot in High Definition we may make DVD's because everyone has a dvd player, so we make dvd's to distribute the videos, even though they originate from High Definition.
If you take the original HDV recordings and use dvd bit-rates you have the same playing lengths as dvd's with regards to bit-rates & dvd sizing. The plus side is the resolution is far better than dvd except it's not high quality high def like the original source videos. But you have to view the video for a short time to realize it's not quite as good as the original footage.
So if you encode 1440x1080 at 8000kbs (8MBS) VBR the average bit-rate flows at approx 5MBS.
Do the calculation on 5MBS total average bit rate and you come out with 37.5 MBytes Per Minute which is 112 Minutes on a single layer dvd.
The video is very acceptable and much better than dvd.
112 Minutes of home video is probably to much for myself or someone else to watch the full dvd.
Most P4-2.8Ghz or 3.2Ghz computers will play these dvd's that average 5MBS.
Not everyone has a fast computers yet to playback the real avchd 15MBS videos, not to mention the video card & playback software.
When you encode with the ulead software to the H264 codec it's not like encoding mpeg2 for dvd's.
For example, when I chain some video clips together I'll put a 5 to 10 second screen ahead of each video to describe the video. It's usually white lettering on a black background. Now the H264 encoder is set to encode at 18MBS variable bit rate. When the text screens are displayed the video-bit-rate drops to about 500kbs, then when the video starts playing the video-bit-rate jumps to 11MBS-12MBS. I'd say that's very efficient encoding.
So this is an indication that to shoot the best videos for avc/h264 encoding to use a tripod. Using a tripod will reduce complete frames from being re-encoded because of the way most persons shoot a home video (shaking and all). This way only the true motion gets the attention of the encoding, reducing the average bit rate yet still retaining quality.
Many Blu-Ray Movies are encoded using the AVC/H264 codec. These blu-ray movies average between 25MBS upto 35MBS of avc/h264. This is alot of information to process at these bit-rates, maybe a good reason why they are still so expensive. Blu-Ray players are actually computers, they take awhile to turn on & play (bootup) because they need to copy their ROM/BIOS information to RAM for fast execution. Actually they boot up pretty slow.
