Incase you hadn't heard, its now possible to use iDVD 4 with external DVD burners, or even 'burn' directly to a disk image.
Download
these two small files and place them in the top level of your home folder eg. ~/
Open, iDVD4, create or open your project and
control-click on the burn button. Then select your external burner, or save as a disk image.
I can confirm it works with the latest version of iDVD4.