Dot is correct, of course.

Although there are actually a couple of ways to accomplish the first action. One is to set a Loop Point. The other is to set start point to a video that launches the main menu after. Depends on the exact effect you're trying to achieve.

1) There are different solutions for this:

Insert your splashscreen as the backround media in the properties of your first menu-page and insert an empty button (right-click on inserted button and choose button style -> graphics only). Then set the length of this menu-page to the desired length for the splash screen to be shown on the general tab. On the end action tab, set the command to "activate button" and choose the empty button you created in the button dropdown-list. Click on your button and go to the action tab of the button properties. Set the command to "link" and choose your main menu page in the "destination" dropdown list, you can also define a destination button. Set auto-activate to yes. Set the page with the splashscreen as firstplay by right-clicking on the page in the tree-view on the left and choosing "set start item".

Second solution: Encode your splashscreen as video with the desired length, insert it before your main menu (set the video to firstplay as descibed above). Open the media properties by double-clicking your video and link your main menu as destination on the end action tab as described above.

2) This can be done by using a system of transparent auto-activated buttons and different menu-backrounds as described above. The drawback is that the navigation will get slow as the player has to jump to a new menu-page everytime you hover over these buttons, and linking all these menus and buttons will be cumbersome.

3) This is not possible, however you can stop the disc with a button command, but not open the tray. 

Shadow, I thought about that approach on #2 but the pictures would not show up as the mouse was hovered until it changed page. And as you correctly stated, would be quite slow and cumbersome to program and watch. He wants the pics to appear and then be replaced, that would be a nightmare for programming and viewing.

If it is only about hiding the pictures and revealing them when hovered over, this could also be achieved with a button over the image by setting the transparent button color to opaque and the fill color to transparent... this would speed the navigation on the pages up as there is no loading of another page for revealing the pictures. Maybe the loading time is acceptable when there is only a delay for replacing the hidden pictures. However the graphics design would be a bit trickier to look good with the opaque buttons, but maybe this will be an acceptable solution.

I don't know a way to hide pictures like you can buttons. The buttons on a DVD can only be solid colors. If your background was a solid color then you could hide them with opaque and transparent buttons, but if your background is textured or another image, that would not work. But that is an interesting approach.