[MPlayer-users] any suggestion to have mplayer "always on", waiting for commands?

[justin case]

hello everybody,

i am looking for a way to have mplayer always on ;)
since i am controlling it via remote i'd like it to be on "standby" all time
so i can access the menu right away to choose a file to play.

a possibillity would surely be to loop a clip (didn't figure how that works,
yet), or - much better - display a .png- or .gif-file.
playing a clip would have the big downside of having the disk running at all
time; normally hdparm sends it to sleep after a couple of minutes of
inactivity..

any suggestions anybody?

my respect!
/jc