Playlist Caching & Offline Mode

How TelemetryTV deals with caching and a device going offline

Kelli avatar
Written by Kelli
Updated over a week ago

TelemetryTV is designed to give your audience the best viewing experience possible, even if your devices lose connection. 

Our Media Player App ensures this by caching your playlist content to your local device, allowing the device to continue to cycle through content even if it loses its connection. 

In this article, I'll answer some FAQs on how caching works.

When does the device cache the content? Is it pre-cached?

The TelemetryTV Media Player caches content as it plays while it's connected to the internet. So, for example, a video will cache as the player plays it, and will then start caching the next content in the playlist once it plays.

At this time, TelemetryTV does not pre-cache content; it only caches once it has played through on the device.

How much content can my device cache?

The amount of content your device can cache depends completely on the individual device's storage. 

If the cache becomes full, it will start caching new content it is playing, and the oldest content will be removed as new content is cached.

How do I check the cache size on my device?

An easy way to do this is by entering debug mode on your device while the TelemetryTV Media Player is running. You can either enter debug mode by pressing ESC on a connected keyboard, or from within your TelemetryTV account by going to Devices > Select Device > Click the "Bug" icon in the top right.

This will put your device screen into debug mode where you'll be able to view cache size, cache limit, and even clear the cache manually. These options will be in the top right, above the page preview.

How long does the TelemetryTV Media Player store cached data on the device?

TelemetryTV caches items for 30 days. Older items will be evicted from the cache and re-downloaded. For example, the device will cache a video once a month to keep it fresh.

As mentioned above, if the cache is full, the oldest content will be the first to go, and new content will take it's place.

If I change a device's playlist, but there are shared media files in the new playlist that were also in the old playlist, will it re-cache these items?

After switching playlists from the same account, the player will reuse the cache of shared media files (image/video) if they exist in both playlists. There’s no need to re-download them unless you clear the cache before switching the playlist.

Cache Tracking and Device Cache Measurement Reports

Cache usage reports

Our devices interface now features a breakdown of your device's Cache quota and Cache usage. This will help users better insight into what content is being cached in the app. Further, it will also outline how much of the device Quota is being used at any given time and what that native allocated cache memory is on the particular device.

Cache Evictions will also show when the last time(s) that the cache was filled and had to consequently be evicted. If the cache is being evicted too frequently, a log will show up in the device stating that the playlist content is too much for the device cache quota.

Caching logs

The app will also feature logs to show when the cached content is being played back on your device. Other new log messages include cache eviction events and warnings (as above).

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