The plex app and a few other apps can pause and resume a video without showing the overlay of video controls and metadata. Since some people may pause the video in order to more closely examine objects in a scene, it would be useful to not automatically show the video controls and metadata.

A good middle ground could be: Continue to show controls and metadata when pausing via the select/OK/enter button on the remote, but do not show them when pausing via the pause button on a remote.