That might be worth looking into, if you remember the author or what to search for I'd be interested in that thread.
XBMC did indeed work (not sure why it wasn't when I first tried it) but it did some odd thing with the DVD I was trying to play. It's a Region 2 (I think, whatever Japan is in) _Leon_ (_The Professional_ here) and when you play it some message in Japanese comes up, plays for about 5 seconds and then the movie starts. No menus or anything. That's with DVDX-2. With XBMC it plays that first 5 second bit and then stops at returns to XBMC as if that were the whole movie. I can't find a way to skip chapters or titles in XBMC either.
I only have this one movie that's not Region 1, so it's not THAT big a deal to use the game controller for it. But it would be slick to have a second dash that's patched to play it with the remote. Doesn't look too promising though.