[gates]

I'll need to do some checking. My initial guess is that the local artist artwork will have to be on a local drive. I know when I try and do a slideshow of images on the main home screen that it only works if the images are local, and Artist Slideshow uses the same core XBMC feature to play a slideshow from a folder of images. If you can assign a local drive letter (assuming your using Windows) to the SMB share, you *might* be able to do it that way.

I'm on ubuntu. I try with a smb mount (for example //192.168.x.x/music/ => /home/xbmcUser/mnt_local_artist/), and it works !
very simple, even for a linux newbie like me :p

I tought about an option ...
would be possible to use only local fanart if we have more than 5 .jpg in extrafanart folder, and use both, local and internet, if we have less 5 .jpg ? (5 is for example of course)

hope my sentence is understandable