Bounty: Fullscreen Slideshow Replacement

I am sponsoring a US$200 bounty to improve/replace the existing fullscreen slideshow applet in Gallery2, based on some discussion with valiant in another thread. The current Java applet looks clunky, is fairly slow and does not scale well to large galleries with many subalbums. There have been a number of attempts in these forums to create an improved version, such as Exlide, suprsidr's flash slideshow and the KBurnalizer, but none of them solves all the aforementioned problems with the Java slideshow applet (especially the scaling problem).

Bounty Details
The amount of the bounty is US$200, of which $100 will be paid to the developer(s) who complete the bounty, and $100 will go to the Gallery project. Deliverables and conditions are subject to revision until Jul 31, 2006. The bounty can be claimed until Dec 31, 2006, but hopefully it will be claimed long before then.

Deliverables

• Program code (and compiled binaries if necessary) of a slideshow utility capable of the following:
  
  • Replicating all features of the current Java applet, including user-selectable delays, random order, preloading, looping, selectable progress/titles/captions, download of low-resolution pictures, stretching of pictures to fill the screen (modifications and exceptions to certain features may be made at my or the dev team's discretion).
  • Displaying slideshows in fullscreen, for instance by launching a popup window that completely fills the screen, or some other device usable with any platform/browser.
  • Using an attractive and intuitive user interface before and during playback for browsing through the slideshow pictures and selecting options.
  • Working effectively with large galleries containing nested albums. The slideshow should be able to start from any album in the gallery, and optionally include all subalbums. Regardless of gallery size, the slideshow should launch almost immediately (valiant had some suggestions about how to do this)
  • Displaying only pictures that the user has permission to view.
• Distribution of the software in the form of a module for Gallery2, to be included in the user-contributed modules list or in the full G2 distribution (at the discretion of the dev team).
• Documentation for the the Gallery administrator, as well as for developers who wish to continue work on this module.

Additional Conditions

• All program code must be licensed under the GPL or other licensing scheme compatible with the Gallery project, so that it can be added to the main G2 distribution if the development team likes it.
• You may use code from the current Java slideshow applet or other GPL slideshow applications as long as you comply with the terms of the license.
• The final program code must be approved by a member of the core development team or a trusted nominee as interacting properly with the Gallery2 system, and not causing major security vulnerabilities.
• The slideshow program may be written in any language or framework executable across common platforms and browsers, including Flash, DHTML, AJAX, Java, etc. It should not require installation of obscure plugins or extensions.

Please note: I am aware that $100 is likely to be poor compensation for the amount of time and effort required to complete this project. This is not work for hire. I am posting this in an effort to motivate development on what I consider to be an essential feature of a picture gallery program. Certainly, if other users wish to add to this bounty, they are welcome to.