Very nice clean skin. I opted for the other route and heavily modified the skin and used all the available real estate and features. I just really wish i could add a scrollbar. Can't share though as i made so many changes it only works with my modified base.
My 2 favorite mods that helped me were to disable the video from stopping when you exit the guide, and adding a "change to 16x9" button in the skin within VideoOSD.xml
<!-- Custom Aspect Ratio -->
<control type="button" id="25111">
<width>55</width>
<height>55</height>
<label>Aspect</label>
<font>-</font>
<texturefocus>special://skin/backgrounds/16x9.png</texturefocus>
<texturenofocus>special://skin/backgrounds/16x9.png</texturenofocus>
<onup>1000</onup>
<ondown>1000</ondown>
<onclick>Dialog.Close(VideoOSD,true)</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
<onclick>aspectratio</onclick>
</control>