Actually
That hack is tOpti 2.0.
VirtueTech has tOpti 1.0, which actually stores the templates (HTML code and all) directly inside the .php files. When you update your templates (from the web admin, as normal) you just need to run a file, and all the SQL calls are once again replaced with the HTML.
It has yet to be released, since he encountered a small bug regarding JavaScript code being escaped, but I will get around to it. As far as which hack is faster, I doubt it can get any faster than the way 1.0 handles it, but there's plenty of room to make it "cleaner".
So, Doron was right in talking about tOpti 1.0, and you were right talking about tOpti 2.0.