[DaveBlake]

My 2 cents: If queries and performance are already highly optimised, move on to intelligent caching. For example, if each thumbnail on a network resource generates a query, copy it or at least a thumbnail locally and load it from there. Leave all costly queries for scraping and load as much as possible from cache for sorting and such. Maybe this could be done through a dedicated add-on, like simplecache does.

This is actually the current design. The issue is that putting things in internal memory (effectively cache) takes time and while this happens the GUI waits, so while it is happening Kodi does nothing but show a progress bar (on the same thread as the caching thus slowing down the process even more).

There are obvious ways this could be improved, but that does not mean that I or any other dev have the time or skill to make the fundamental changes required at this time.

Getting just the stuff we need only when it is needed would be my prefered approach. That would take a fundamental redesign too. One reason I am persoanlly not trying to rework the load the lot into local memory approach is that I would choose to do it differently. And by time I went off on my own and fixed it, Kodi would have moved on in some other direction and my work would be wasted.

The best I can do here is try to make the design issues and options clear, then at least we can lean the ladder against the correct wall.