[mythtv-users] 0.22 MythVideo slow first time cover art displays

[Kevin Kuphal]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 4:02 PM, freedenizen <freedenizen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Kevin Kuphal <kkuphal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Michael T. Dean
>> <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>>> On 09/29/2009 03:19 PM, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
>>
>>> So, the solution is for someone*** who thinks waiting until 0.23 for these
>>> metadata features would be better to actually write a theme that doesn't use
>>> any of the images (or uses just the poster images, like in 0.21-fixes).  If
>>> the theme doesn't use the artwork, MythVideo/Watch Recordings doesn't
>>> attempt to retrieve/scale/process it, so there's no delay.
>>
>> A workaround, but also not really the point of what I was saying.  Why
>> include something in the release if it requires this type of
>> workaround which essentially disables the feature?  I know it is
>> probable that not every user will experience a delay or not everyone
>> will find the lack of integrated metadata fetching in Watch Recordings
>> a problem.  I was simply making an observation about including
>> features that might appear incomplete to general users who likely
>> don't have the patience that people more development oriented have
>> given that it's supposed to be "release quality".
>
> Are you clearing out your images and downloading new ones a lot?  I've
> found that once I have everything scaled there isn't a slowdown, sure
> I had to go through all my shows and movies once and that took a
> while, but now that it is all scaled it is pretty quick, only time it
> is slow is initially selecting a show or movie that I have never
> viewed before, or if I change to a theme I haven't used before.  For a
> fairly stable and static install it is very usable.

I understand it works very well once the images are downloaded.  My
comment was along the lines of why the download wasn't backgrounded in
the first place given the dependence on outside sources that could be
down, unavailable, or slow for a user.  Why not design a UI that
handles such problematic pieces to occur behind the scenes?  Seems a
much better experience for users to find that fanart (or any other
metadata that we might support in the future) appears as they are
working with the software (or after a specific fetch) rather than a
halting UI that you wait for while it does the work.  It's the same
complaint people put forward for Watch Recordings for scheduler
updates, preview generation, etc. etc. and work was done to make those
background tasks.  Seems that it would be logical that new features
would build on that work rather than be subject to similar
criticisms...

Kevin