display remote image without save it

We really should provide a setting for this. The reason we download it is that most times, you will be using an image style with your image to resize it. If it is located on a remote server, this can be difficult and then creates an edge case which is hard to work around (where you have a field with four pieces of media and one is remote). Still, we could have a setting to just let it sit remotely and resize it on-demand hoping no one tries a really big image.

See http://drupal.org/project/remote_stream_wrapper which now implements this.

Another way to achieve this would be to create a new CCK field in D7 with the necessary filter (PHP, Full HTML etc.) In this use case scenario, I needed to import a large number of nodes using Feeds, where one field had the URL of an image on a remote location.

I prefixed a generic HTML image embed code before and after the URL in the CSV field. Upon import the remote image was successfully visible without using ImageCache or creating a local copy within the D7 file structure. For aesthetics, Panels, and Display Suite were used to place this image field appropriately. Hope this helps someone.