Thank you to everyone for the responses, and apologies about the search. I did do one but I never seem to have much luck with the search function on Creative Cow.
In any case, it does appear that trying to convert the footage to 16×9 is a royal pain, and that making the 4×3 dvd and allowing the monitor to add bars is the way to go.
Again, thanks, and if anyone has any other suggestions or tips, i would love to read them. I have not worked in 16×9 at all and it is a bit frightening.