I just came across this thread yesterday and it has helped me immensely. I too suffered from the rendering crashes of Vegas 8 which were fortunately fixed in Vegas 9. However, the AVCHD files I was making would stutter and audio desync during playback on PS3. I tried the suggestion of using tsMuxer and it worked!
I’ve spent the last few hours using tsMuxer on all my AVCHD files (the final edited versions). I do have Vegas 9d and there is no mention of this as a known bug, so I hope they take care of it for 9e. Seems like it would be an easy fix.
I started with SR12, now have an XR500, and getting CX550 next week. Finally seeing AVCHD at full frame rate on HDTV is a good feeling.