IOS – How to get rid of Newsstand

This should solve your video portion:

iStartupMovie is a new jailbreak tweak, which allow to play any video of your choice before the iOS home screen is displayed.This jailbreak tweak only add a “iStartupMovie Manager” to your iDevice and doesn’t effect on your other settings.

Once you have installed iStartupMovie, a new app will be appear on your Home screen. With this app, you can enable or disable the movies (MP4/M4V). Add videos of your choice to /var/mobile/Library/Startup Movies directory using either iFile (which can be obtained from Cydia).You can move as many videos into that directory as you want, in order to select which one you actually want to be played at bootup, launch the iStartupMovie Manager app and just pick your favorite video. The change should take effect immediately. There’s no apparent length limit for the boot up video but be reasonable.

You can Download iStartupMovie from Cydia’s BigBoss repository for free. You must jailbreak your iPhone before installing this tweak. You can follow our step by step Tutorial jailbreak your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch on iOS 4.3.5 using (PwnageTool), or on iOS 4.3.4 or on iOS 4.3.3

Reference:

http://techflipper.com/add-custom-startup-video-to-iphone-or-ipad-jailbreak-tweak/

Back up your iPad with iTunes. Back up that hard drive. Unplug that backup and store it far away from any internet connection. If you do update Sykpe by mistake, restore the iPad from the backup. It won't keep Skype from updating, but it will preserve your ability to undo the update.