thanks ukki, i looked into that and it does work well, but too buggy (crashes, freezes) on my n800 to use it all the time.

what i'm doing now is making simple DVD-like menus in HTML. an easy way to design them is first in photoshop, then using the slice tool to separate buttons from the rest of the menu before outputting to HTML.

and using the application DBus-Switchboard to associate .avi files with mplayer.

i like it, but ideally something like a mplayer frontend with a simple integrated web browser to show the HTML based DVD style menus (without animation).

or, if someone is ambitious, a front end that makes use of flash or similar.

another suggestion would be a plug-in for Canola (although I don't think canola uses mplayer. unbelievable that it doesn't as i'm sure the people making canola know that it should)