Converting files for playing on blu ray player

[Rob.T]

Hi there .. I am an HDTV / blu ray newbie. I got my first LCD HDTV yesterday and my first blu ray player today (I haven't even used it yet), so please be gentle with me.

My question concerns converting blu ray video files into a format that will play on my blu ray player. I have a colleague who tells me that he is able to play all Hi-def file formats on his HDTV using the blu ray in his PS3, but I understand that is not the case for my Samsung BD-P1500. The movie/TV files I have seen are ina number of different formats: mkv; avi; mov; mp4; m2ts. As best I can see, the 1080p/i files are either m2ts or mkv, while the 720p files can be mp4, avi, mov or mkv.

How'm I doing so far?

The question is: can I covert these files into a form that can be burned onto a DVD (either single or double sided) and played on my blu ray player? Before I got a DVD player that played avi/divx files, I would use various kinds of software to convert these files into playable DVD's. Is there anything I can use to do the same thing for these blu ray file formats, without losing the advantage of hi def?

Many thanks for your patience in reading this and for your response.

Regards,
Rob