Today i got a mail form wwitv. They were having problems the last 2 month with their datatraffic. So they asked me if i would change the plugin so i got a link with a textfile with all the channels in it. I asked them if they could see what caused the increase because wwitw did not work for a while ( after new year ). They could not give me an answer. They also said there were other projects doing the same as mediaportal.
My question is because i only added catgegory support. the plugin itzelf already existsed for 8 months ( countryselection ) or so an they have only problems since 2 months. Can the wwitv plugin cause the trouble. Now i got textfiles they are about 256 kb for each language but i doubt if it helps their problems is the way i do it now not causing less datatraffic ?.
I think i will try to get the data form the txt in a local xml file and make a button which can be pressed to update channel info. So mediaportal only gets the channellists if you push the button.
But i still doubt if this is not peanuts, because all the streaming media they supply is that not causing more data traffic. if i for instance call channel ZTV http://www.ztv.se/|http://wwitv.com/tt/b1877.asx who gets the datatraffix wwitv or www.tzve.se ? i saw there are streams with 2000k at movie.
On the other hand it also has advantages because the plugin will get more stable because it no more depends on the website. Please help.
Go with the text file they will provide. That way you won't risk having to update your plugin every time they make a change to their web site. A text file should be much easier to parse than having to parse an ever changing web site.
I like your idea of having an update button. After selecting language, have a button to refresh the channel listing, that way only one 256Kb file will have to be downloaded. That should only take a few seconds..... keep in mind everyone using a plugin to watch streaming video will most likely have a broadband connection anyways.