Agreed. I wish that RPi has some kind of cheap prebuild of a mediaplayer. If would be GREAT for non-techies if it just had a real power on/off switch, IR sensor & a basic remote that just works (probably asking for too much there).

I reckon you could fix the lag of the GUI if someone implemented Raspbmc/OpenELEC with Wayland instead of X-server. Not much has to change for this to be possible. Only the power switch & IR sensor would have to be apart of it. Remote could potentially be third party and WBMC would a man hours issue.