The reason it stutters and stalls isn't due to a multitasking problem, rather it is because when clicking on a podcast section the first thing it does is start fetching the art.
While I am on 300kb (note kb not kB) this can max out my available bandwidth until finished.
The fastest images take about 5 seconds to download and the slowest around 30 seconds.
Like many others pay for my data and having to re-download a bulky unoptimised image over and over is not wanted.
Yes I can switch it off, but then go with out the artwork even if it has previously downloaded.
Why not just have it behave like albums, so if artwork is found in the folder it shows that?
What if we want to have it display own custom artwork, or preferred images sourced from the podcast site etc. ?
We can do that with albums, so why not podcasts ?
Art chosen by the user placed in the folder should override what the podcast wants to show.
That way users can also happily live with podcast art switched off, yet see art when actually playing a file if none was supplied.
Looking at podcasts in the media lib that have both series art and episode art, it seems to be able to tell the difference already.
In the media library we see the art that doesn't change (the one that should be cached), and when you DL an episode you get the episode art.
Should the series art ever be changed for some reason, deleting the local copy could then let WACUP know you want new art next time you select the feed.
At the very least the image can be cached for this session so navigating around the podcasts does not result in repeated downloads of the same image within minutes or seconds of last being displayed.