Okay, more research into this problem to pass along.
I just examined the "art" table in the xbmc_video75 database on my NAS, using phpMyAdmin. I sorted it by media type so that I could look at all the movies together. I then started examining the artwork/thumbnail URL's that each movie used where "type" was "poster", and compared it to my ATV2's movie library to see if I could find a pattern.
Some of the movies had poster URL's that pointed to my local files. For instance, for "Jaws", the URL points to: "nfs://192.168.1.211/volume3/movies/Jaws (1975)/Jaws 1.1975.DVDRip-aXXo.tbn". That thumbnail displays in my movie library.
Some of the movies had a poster URL that pointed to cf1.imgobject.com or cf2.imgobject.com. Of these, if the URL pointed to a valid image (i.e., I could enter the URL in Firefox and I could see an image), then I indeed was able to see that image in my library. Oddly, some of my movies pointed to these cf1 or cf2 external links, even though I have poster.jpg files locally on my NAS.
However, if I tried entering one of those cf1 or cf2 links in Firefox for movies where I don't have visible thumbnails, I got an error like this in Firefox:
Code:
<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message>
<RequestId>066192A19EDDD8B4</RequestId>
<HostId>xan7tnYrR//l3CXqr4WfOArVn7n1AjfLzGxI8fy8CFW6bVlaNDBEpMivd5eNYL7Y</HostId>
</Error>
For instance, here's one that is giving me that error:
http://cf1.imgobject.com/posters/559/4bc...iginal.jpg
And here's one that is working for me, where I see the thumbnail in my library:
http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/kQ...d8YTVJ.jpg
So....access denied trying to access these external cf1 or cf2.imgobject.com links. That would explain why those images are not being displayed in my library obviously.
But I'm still not quite sure why I'm having that problem with some-but-not-all of those links, and I'm still not sure why XBMC is passing over my local poster.jpg files in favour of trying to use these external images.
Still hoping one of our esteemed developers will chime in here...
waiiiiiiiit a minute. I have yet to find a working link to any URL at "cf1.imgobject.com". The working URL links are all at "cf2.imgobject.com".
Not only that, but the formation of the URL for cf1 and cf2 is different:
-- cf1.imgobject.com has this format:
http://cf1.imgobject.com/posters/[3-digit alphanumeric]/[24-digit alphanumeric]/[movie-with-dashes-between-words]-original.jpg
--cf2.imgobject.com has this format:
http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/[27-digit alphanumeric].jpg
Not sure if that's significant, but I've definitely narrowed it down to the fact that no cf1.imgobject.com thumbnail is being displayed in my movie library, whereas every cf2.imgobject.com thumbnail IS being displayed.