Hi all,
This topic will give some inputs on lack of persistent storage on Apple TV, and how we have chosen to handle it.
On iOS, you are likely aware that apps have an internal storage area that it can use, which is persistent, and used until the app is removed from the device.
On the Apple TV, there are no such thing as persistent storage - it is more or less designed to work around online services - the applications can download content to a cache area, but there is no guarantee when the device will clear this cache area.
The way the My Movies applications works on iOS, Android and other platforms is to have an internal data, to which it synchronises data - this allows for functionalities such as advanced filtering, and much other functionality that we feel works best with an internal database.
However, on the Apple TV, such internal database can only be placed in the cache area, and therefore it can be removed at any time.
We have despite that decided to build the application around a database anyways.
This means that when you log into the application, it will direct load a list of titles from our service, and it will then start populating the internal database in the background, a process you can see the progress of on the settings page. Images are loaded directly from the service when navigating the application.
You can from the time you log in directly browse your collection, but functionalities that requires the extended data to be available will be unavailable until the background data download process have finalised. If you open a title before the process has finalised, the data for that title will simply be directly loaded on demand.
There is no doubt that we hope that the guys at Apple at some point determine that no persistent storage at all is not ideal in all situations, and lets an application have a minimum of persistent storage available to it, or, at minimum have some files, such as our database file be marked as priority, so that it will be the last to be cleared from the cache when the device is in need of storage - however, lets see if any changes is made on the device later on in that relation.
Feel free to ask if you have any questions on this approach.
Best regards,
Brian Binnerup
My Movies
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