Moding IH4 to be able to accept external images

[icecold]

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http://theoutletseason.com/nfc (demo site)

Currently using 1.5.5a until I fix this, because it's a sandbox.

My problem :

I use a proprietary system to instantly upload and auto update ALL my products every day, from the vendors server.
The system adds two tables to the standard structure, and uses direct URL for the images.
so each product image is remote.

As ZC is designed to make this really hard, I went through several suggestions, and was using, some old contributions, that gave a bit more light to the thing in question, therefore I was able to pinpoint what to target, but so far my efforts to remove the added FS_Catalog and /image before the string that builds the src, have been unsuccessful, as I always ended up with the same,

http://theoutletseason.com/nsc/images/http://vendorsurl.com/externalimagename

Which is completely wrong!!!
because I just need the img src to be http://vendorsurl.com/externalimagename.jpg
but despite my efforts, like if I

define('DIR_EXT_HTTP',''); 

and replace all instances of DIR_WS_IMAGES, that are related to products, of course not icons or local images, just products.
I end up with the same malformed URL ...