Have finally resolved the issue, and many thanks to Steve, Sidd and especially twosheds who has provided a considerable amount of time and effort into getting a very good final product. I ended up NOT resizing any of the pics which were close to the 1770 pixels to begin with, and then had to Scale to Frame Size (I only have a few pics on timeline as test, so unclear if not resizing will become an issue when I add up to 60 digitized pics for final project). Project settings are AVCHD 1080p, 59.94fps. Then exported as HD 1920x1080 and MP4 H.264, highest quality. The final result, when streaming from hard drive to television, is nearly as good as Photoshop Create a SlideShow. I presume clarity will not be quite as good when burning to a standard DVD, but may upgrade to BluRay later on.
Very pleasing result, and thanks again to all for your input.