I have been looking for a way to get rid of the nasty black initial screen on a VideoView before the start() method is run.
I have tried with background image on the
I had the same problem on Galaxy tab 2, Android 4.1.1.
Do videoView.setZOrderOnTop(true); and next videoView.start()
videoView.setZOrderOnTop(true);
videoView.start()
It works fine for me.