2015-03-12, 16:42
I rewrote large parts of the ARD Mediathek Add-on in the last few days as took a closer look at the "Mediathek" add-on. Its state is almost totally broken. It throws errors, ommits entries, lacks features, loads new pages very slowly and delivers the videos at an inferior quality. I know that a developer can't always be around when something breaks, but this add-on had major flaws to begin with. It prefetches the stream url for EVERY entry. This results in 10 to 20 page requests per directory! The server prevents that/detects a DDOS and stops delivering content. The user gets stuck in the loading animation.
I don't think that an add-on should be added to the main respository with this kind of flaw. My propositions:
- Check any new add-on if it is usable
- Require an user support thread in the forum
- Don't accept add-ons with multiple sources (in that case, ARD, Arte, ZDF, ...)
- Mark such add-ons as broken (for now)
Don't get me wrong, the "Mediathek" add-on was once the only one available, but now it is vastly outdated. I know how time consuming it is to write/test add-ons with a broken interface like the ARD delivers, I spend the last week at it.
I don't think that an add-on should be added to the main respository with this kind of flaw. My propositions:
- Check any new add-on if it is usable
- Require an user support thread in the forum
- Don't accept add-ons with multiple sources (in that case, ARD, Arte, ZDF, ...)
- Mark such add-ons as broken (for now)
Don't get me wrong, the "Mediathek" add-on was once the only one available, but now it is vastly outdated. I know how time consuming it is to write/test add-ons with a broken interface like the ARD delivers, I spend the last week at it.
