Are Blu-ray discs / DVD's just containers?

[Peleus]

Hi all,

First post here, sorry if its an often asked question.

What I'm wondering is this - IGNORING capacity, is there much of a technical difference between bluray and DVD's? An example I would give is lets say I have 1 minute of Full HD VC1 encoded footage as a file on my computer. The size of this file is 3gb. Can I put this footage onto a blank DVD, pop it into my Bluray player, and watch it? Would it look exactly the same as if I had put it on a Bluray disc?

Looking at the FAQ it lists 720 x 576 as the highest resolution of a DVD, can we not put higher resolution files on a DVD and watch them? Please note I'm mainly talking about what is possibly to do with blank DVD media, not what are the pre-produced DVD's you buy off the shelf.

Can we not put AVCHD footage on a normal DVD player and play them in a bluray player? (Or any other AVCHD supporting player).

Is the bitrate the only technical difference between the formats? Do you actually notice this or do most productions not use the full 10mbps capacity of the DVD's?

Cheers.