Set timeout=5 in grub.conf Grub will then countdown, but the background is black, but behind the letters there is the graphics backgound.
Are you sure you're using grub2 and not grub? What's something along the lines of rpm -qa | grep -i grub spit out?
You are right, it is grub =) I have changed the bug component to grub. Hopefully I have the permissions to do that.
We're looking at a duplicate of #473319.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 473319 ***