[mardukL]

i switched off the internet and like i suspected the ratings don't show up at all. 
So it definitely not uses the cache, it just fills it up but that's it.
i wonder why 

Mine working offline :-) 

 Ratings for us are not caching and do take a minimum of 5-10 seconds. Fanart.tv not working. Extra Fanart rotating stopped working since Fanart.tv stopped working even if Movie Set files are stored locally

It might help if you can explain your set up including:
- Which repositories you are using,
- What settings you use your skin media page
- What settings you are using for addons Universal Scraper, ArtBeef and Metamedia

This is a great Skin. But it's just not working as well as it could be for me and for many others.

Regards and Thanks

Skinhelper use simple cache to store the online lookups, by using its modules .e.g. metadatautils.
(e.g. for Ratings, animated art,infos, etc....)
The refresh rste is 30 days.

I am not on pc to debug some stuff.
But the cache will also work on your side IF THE DATA IS CACHED ALREADY.