My DVD Player automatically plays a slide show of any CD onto which you have copied jpg files. It does this automatically when the CD is inserted. No matter what is on the CD, if finds all the jpg files and lines them up in a slide show. The interval can be adjusted. The DVD player cost about $40 at Radio Shack and is called CyberHome. This DVD player will also play MP3 files on a CD.
If you want to be able to play on "ANY" DVD player, including older models that do not have all the latest features, then I recommend using Nero Burns ROM, because it has all of the modes you could want, including VCD and S-VCD as well as DVD burning. Every DVD burner that I have purchased has its own idea of what kind of authoring tools you need. They all work fine.
For most needs the Windows Movie Maker program, which is coming on new computers as part of Windows XP is more than adequate for producing Video DVD's from either video clips or still images or mixtures of the two.