02.23.05
AACs on a TiVo
TiVo has a very cool feature called TiVo Desktop that pulls music from your computer and plays it over whatever stereo you have hooked up for your TV, while displaying the song, artist, and album names on the TV. Unfortunately for iTunes users, the TiVo Desktop download page warns that the feature “does not support AAC audio files (including music purchased at the iTunes Music Store).” As it turns out—for Mac users, at least—half of that statement is a dirty, rotten lie.
As posted on PVRblog this morning, playing AAC files over TiVo Desktop is as simple as installing a command-line MP3 encoder called LAME. You don’t even have to use the command line to make it work—a handy package file on Vas the Man’s Downloads page will install the program for you, and then the feature just works without further ado. I don’t know if there’s a way to make it work for iTunes-using Windows users, and since I’m not a Windows user myself, I have no motivation for finding out.
But the other half of that warning on TiVo’s page remains problematic: TiVo Desktop won’t play DRM-encoded files, like the ones you get from the iTunes Music Store. So you’ll just have to strip the DRM nonsense from your AAC files if you want to play them on your TiVo.
