# Playing "Purchased AAC audio" files on TiVo



## hargreae (Feb 23, 2005)

I have an Intel Mac running Leopard and I can currently play my AAC audio files on my Series 2 TiVo using TiVo Desktop 1.9.3 and the 'lame' install documented elsewhere on this site. 

I realize TiVo cannot play "Protected AAC audio" files, but what about "Purchased AAC audio" files? These are iTunes Plus files, where there is no DRM.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

hargreae said:


> I have an Intel Mac running Leopard and I can currently play my AAC audio files on my Series 2 TiVo using TiVo Desktop 1.9.3 and the 'lame' install documented elsewhere on this site.
> 
> I realize TiVo cannot play "Protected AAC audio" files, but what about "Purchased AAC audio" files? These are iTunes Plus files, where there is no DRM.


They *should* work through the same lame on-the-fly transcoding process. I don't have a Mac to try it out on, but since you already have the lame part working, have you tried sharing the itunes music directory and browsing to an plus purchase?

Hopefully someone with more intimate knowledge of Mac TiVo Desktop can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong.


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## pkscout (Jan 11, 2003)

I have iTunes Plus tracks (i.e. purchased instead of protected) and they work fine with the transcoding.


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## hargreae (Feb 23, 2005)

I double-checked and they still won't work. iTunes Plus purchases do not appear in TiVo to play. If a playlist only contains iTunes Plus files, the entire playlist will not appear.

I turned on the TiVo Desktop debugging and the log has a few of these entries...

iTunesContext: Rejected song because Song: format Purchased AAC audio file not mp3 or convertible to mp3


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## pkscout (Jan 11, 2003)

hargreae said:


> I double-checked and they still won't work. iTunes Plus purchases do not appear in TiVo to play. If a playlist only contains iTunes Plus files, the entire playlist will not appear.
> 
> I turned on the TiVo Desktop debugging and the log has a few of these entries...
> 
> iTunesContext: Rejected song because Song: format Purchased AAC audio file not mp3 or convertible to mp3


I don't know what you're doing, but your doing something wrong. I just quadruple checked. I went to an artist for whom I just yesterday downloaded the iTunes Plus tracks, hit play on the TiVo, and the sound started coming out. No problems, no issues, no fuss.

I guess maybe we're into YMMV.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

There's always pyTivo...


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## bedelman (Feb 26, 2001)

hargreae said:


> I double-checked and they still won't work. iTunes Plus purchases do not appear in TiVo to play. If a playlist only contains iTunes Plus files, the entire playlist will not appear.
> 
> I turned on the TiVo Desktop debugging and the log has a few of these entries...
> 
> iTunesContext: Rejected song because Song: format Purchased AAC audio file not mp3 or convertible to mp3


Do you have LAME installed? It's needed so that TiVo Desktop for Mac OSX can transcode the AAC file for the TiVo.


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

wmcbrine said:


> There's always pyTivo...


I use pyTivo for movies, but the official Tivo Desktop for my music. I don't personally find it nearly as useful if I have to navigate folders to listen to music - I'd rather just load up one of my defined iTunes "favorites" playlists.

To the OP - as soon as my daughter finishes watching her show  I'll double-check, but I'm pretty sure I can play the iTunes Plus tracks on my Tivo as well.


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

Well I have something interesting to report. I'd recently build lame 3.98.2 from scratch, and put it in /usr/local/bin (this was a few days back). Just now when I went and tried to play one of my newly-upgraded iTunes Plus (AAC 256kbps) songs, it would play as just a continual loud hiss.

So I deleted that version, and copied lame 3.97 from my fink directory (/sw/bin) over to /usr/local/bin - now everything plays just fine.

I'm not seeing anything odd in my system log, so I don't believe lame was reporting any errors the first time.

I may try building 3.97 from scratch to check if it's the version, or if there's a missing option - I didn't notice anything odd during the original build of 3.98.2 though.

*Follow-up:* Built 3.97 from scratch using defaults - everything worked fine. Re-downloaded 3.98.2, built it again... same problem. So there appear to be issues with 3.98.2 ...


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## hargreae (Feb 23, 2005)

How do I check which version of lame I have installed?


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

From the command line just type "lame" or "/usr/bin/lame". It'll print out a lot of stuff, but the very first line will contain the version number.

Unfortunately there's no "--version" flag like most other Unix commands have.


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## hargreae (Feb 23, 2005)

Thanks, I have LAME version 3.96.1 
So I guess I should upgrade to 3.97 and see if that changes things


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

Your problem may very well not be an issue with lame, since you're reporting the tracks don't even show up. With lame 3.98.2, I still saw the tracks - it was just that they weren't being played / transcoded correctly.


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## hargreae (Feb 23, 2005)

My problem was solved by upgrading to a newer version of TiVo Desktop. The TiVo web site doesn't say which version is current, so I assumed mine was. But after clicking to download it, I saw that it is 1.94 (mine was 1.93). After installing 1.94 the "Purchased AAC" files showed up in my TiVo. Unfortunately they were playing as all hiss with lame 3.98, so I put back lame 3.96 and now the files are playing fine on my TiVo. Yay! Now I have 80 more songs I can listen to on my TiVo!


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