You mentioned HD in your title, but mentioned SD resolution. If you are working at HD resolution, it’s 16:9 anyways. If it is SD, then like Steve said do your graphics in 16:9 and make a 16:9 SD DVD. But set the playback DVD in 16:9 mode as well. For example my little Sony DVD player if you turn it on w/o a disk in it, you can get to menu pages to set it to 16:9. So when it has 16:9 material on it, it will be properly displayed on the screen.
If you do your graphics at 4:3, then yes you will have to set the Plasma to 4:3 but you will get cropped sides (How I watch SD TV). But you can, if it doesn’t bother you, set it to “Full screen” which stretches the image (like you usually see in Bars where they play sports and news streched out) which drives me nutz but apparently doesn’t bother many ppl.
Side note, make sure your graphics never stall on any one image for more than a brief moment or after your graphics loop on it for a while you can seriously damage the screen from permanent images being left on it. A buddy tried to sell me some Plasmas cheap that had been in a bar. We turned them on but to a black image and I could see the stripes from the CNBC Stock ticker permanently in the image. No deal.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com