After digging around to learn more about TiVo Desktop 1.9 for Mac OS X, I learned about an interesting hidden feature: you can play back AAC files on your TiVo by using a transcoding feature. On the TiVo Community Forum thread about version 1.9, a user describes how you can use LAME to transcode unprotected AAC files. This doesn't get you iTunes Music Store DRMed AAC playback, but if you've ripped many other CDs in AAC (like I have), you'll be quite happy about this. The basic idea is this:
Here are the steps on the command line for a G4 (from the blacktree forum). Note that the multi-line commands should be entered on one line.
$ cd ~
$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
$ curl http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.96.1.tar.gz\
-o lame-3.96.1.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf lame-3.96.1.tar.gz
$ cd lame-3.96.1
$ ./configure CFLAGS="-O3 -falign-loops-max-skip=15 -falign-jumps-max-skip=15 \
-falign-loops=16 -falign-jumps=16 -falign-functions=16 -malign-natural -ffast-math \
-fstrict-aliasing -funroll-loops -floop-transpose -mpowerpc-gpopt -fsched-interblock \
--param max-gcse-passes=3 -fno-gcse-sm -mcpu=G4 -mtune=G4"
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ~
$ rm -rf tmp
After compiling, I compared the resulting binary program in /usr/local/bin/lame to the Fink-compiled lame, and found that the optimized version was 3.6x faster (7 versus 25 seconds) at compressing an MP3 with the default options. This optimization reduced my processor usage while transcoding with TiVo
from 80% to 25%.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050217074716445