the following screenshot doesnt show it correctly as the video doesnt show in screenshots:
below i've adjusted the brightness so you can see what the problem is:
as you can see the submenu isn't opaque, its transparent and it makes it very hard to read when the video is playing. I'm using vlc 0.9.9 and this has happened several times to me. i've got a 9400gt card with latest nvidia drivers btw, running xp pro sp3.