Travel these days really isn't that bad. Plus with it only being five games, it's actually the same number of travel days as there currently are in a seven game series so that doesn't really seem to be a compelling argument to me.

As for the play-in tournament. It would at most take 2-3 days and would give the teams that made the playoffs a bit of a rest to be more fresh for the first round. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. There's definitely a way to schedule things so that it's not a big burden.