Hi, Final Cut guy here. Don't try editing the M2Vs. Final Cut is an amazing editor but it's a bit finicky about what you put into it. To Balance Quality with Editability I'd recommend you use MPEG Streamclip to convert the m2Vs into either ProRes422 (If you have FCS) or DVCPRO50 (If you are using Express). turn the quality slider all the way up.

DV looks like shite (a good example would be the Phantom editor's DVDs) and those Photo and Animation formats are slow and hard to edit

Hope that helps.

Btw welcome to the Mac club :)