That DVD FAQ site was quite interesting, certainly a lot of information on offer there. Most of my digital video experience has been in SE Asia where things were nearly always compatible with any type of disk or format (including region code)
I'm mainly looking at sending disks to friends/family back in the UK or Hong Kong, so I'll be using PAL format. The DVD player (Samsung DVD 909K) that my mother has in the UK is from HK, so it plays anything you throw at it generally.
Well I made a test "Photo VCD" disk last night and used Power DVD on my PC to Play it back. (Putting the disk in my DVD drive automatically loaded this program - I guess that is a good sign?) The "slideshow" played back on a time delay and advanced image by image automatically - or "streaming" as you mentioned.
I need to make up an NTSC disc and test it out on a standalone DVD (US version) here to see just how well it works though.
It is amazing the price of DVD players here in the US nowadays - just a pity they are all NTSC/110v
Virtually all A/V electronics in Hong Kong were multi-system and dual voltage - not to mention that most of the region codes are also removed when you purchase them also.
The region code issue was a stupid idea anyway - the pirates just make "region-free" DVD disks to play on players anyway
I know that this was not the original intention of the coding, but, if they really thought people should not be able to watch a movie on DVD until after the screen release of the movie, then they know nothing of the viewing habits of SE Asia and the fact that most Hollywood Movies are out on Pirate DVD/VCD long before the region 1 disk is available anyway