Tested it, and I like it.. I just stole your idea and implented it in my titanium moving pictures skin, its actually quite in style with the rest of the skin. Its a bit busy tho, with the backgrounds changing so fast. So I changed it so it stays for about 4 secs + the 1 sec animation time.
I had it at first with timeperimage 5000 msec and fadetime 2000 msec but I thought it would be confusing for the viewer (including me ;-) ) that it would not be the backdrop of the selected movie.
So I choose to speed up the fading.
Will check to see how your settings are doing.
Also, when I select a movie without a backdrop, with this setting I notice a drop in performance (not the fastest system) do you experience the same?
(btw, you can't steal it ;-) )
Netherlands