I use the Dune setup option known as "Blank (or Black) screen. This means that the Dune navigation screens never come up. My Theater is controlled by a PC that is in turn controlled over WiFi/LAN from a Pronto PRO or an iPad; normally the Pronto PRO. The pronto PRO, like the iPad using Command Fusion software, has a full Javascript engine so you can do just about anything you want through Javascript programming.
All my movies are ripped to MKV containers and I control the rip such that only the main movie is ripped with no dire warnings, or previews. I also only rip the best (highest quality) audio track and turn all subtitles except forced English off.
The MKV file is stored in a folder on the NAS named with the title of the movie. This folder also holds cover art, fan art, chapter info and a trailer avi if available. I have special software that builds all the folders for all the movies I own (DVD and BR). I use DVDprofiler to maintain my library and as the primary source for all info about the movie, and the cover art. I wish they would add a fan-art feature. I get the fan-art from the TMDB (
www.themoviedb.com) data base and just change its opacity to be washed out as a background.
When I direct the PC to start the librarian (I want to watch a movie, TV show, or concert) the PC places on the theaters main screen my Librarian's output. There are several views the librarian supplies (24x2 title listing, Cover Collage, or Info) I generally use "Info" which is similar to what Kelaidescape provides. This shows a fan art background, with a scrollable title list (24 titles) on the left, all the info about the movie, the Cover art and the option to play the trailer if there is one. All info changes as you scroll the title list. The display may be sorted by title or release date, filtered by Genre, or type of presentation (TV Episodes, Concerts, movies)
When I hit play on my remote the PC sends to the Dune (which was powered on as soon as the librarian started) the Full Path Name to the selected movie, TV episode or Concert using IP and switches the AV processor to take the Dune as the input to the main screen.
The Dune's little clock hands icon appear on the top left of the black screen indicating the Dune is setting up to play the movie. If more than one audio track is available the first one is picked and the Dune places a banner on the screen indicating what Audio codec is being used (e.g. True-HD). The entire process for a Blu-Ray disk takes 7 seconds from the time I say "Play" to the movie actually starting. DVD's start in about half that time. If I stop the movie the librarian is restored. I have not implemented a "start where left off" and could easily do so as the current time code info is available from the Dune. I do have the ability to move to any "Chapter" Position as I have chapter files in the movies folder on the NAS.
Lastly the NAS is a Lime Technologies "unRaid" unit that I built. It has 12 available drive slots in a 4U rack mount so it's maximum capacity is 33 TB with 3 TB for parity (it is raid 5 with parity not striped across all drives, but contained only on one). It is ultra reliable running a version of Unix and has a large following and excellent forum. The NAS is completely controlled housekeeping wise using a Browser, and all folders may be organized into "Shares" and exposed on the LAN. My shares are movies, concerts, TV shows. The NAS will manage the loading of the disks using one of several algorithms, or you can direct where a folder is to be placed.
Hope the above helps. Probably more than you wanted. If not email me more questions.