I told myself I would never cave in and buy an Ipod but I finally broke down and sold my soul after my Karma finally died After doing quite a bit of research I decided to go with a 5.5g Ipod Video with an 80 gig hard drive, only because it plays the Rockbox firmware. I needed FLAC and OGG support from my DAP and the Ipod unfortunately was the only device available at the time that was large enough 40+gig, that would play the files I was looking to play. My question to you current Ipod owners is this, is there a way to transfer music to and from the Ipod without installing the dreaded Itunes software? I've heard/read from countless people that Itunes is a complete resources hog and I'd like to avoid it like the plague if at all possible. Second question is, do any of you currently have Rockbox installed on your Ipod and what have your experiences been with the software so far? How do you load the Rockbox software and still keep the original Ipod software so that you can boot from either system, since as far as I know, Rockbox doesn't support video at the moment so I'd like to still have the Ipod software loaded on the machine if I would like to watch video. Thanks in advance for any advice.

I'd imagine it would be a bitch and a half to do so.


http://techticker.blogspot.com/2005/11/ ... itute.html

http://www.iprong.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... a677941429

try using google if you don't find anything over there.

also I just use Itunes, so I have no idea what would work. That's just the result of a google search so no guarantees.

a friend of mine recommends Red Chair. apparently, you can play music and video using this software. it's like an ipod with all the same functions, but no iTunes lock down. haven't tried it, nor have i researched it. let me know if it works.

I have a 60GB 5g ipod. Used to have rockbox on it for FLACs and other formats but I don't anymore.

When I used rockbox, no it didnt do video.

To switch between rockbox and the standard ipod firmware, you just reboot the ipod (by holding menu and select for a few seconds). If you want rockbox, just let it boot up. If you want the apple firmware, hold menu while it's booting. simple.

You don't need itunes if you want to play your music through rockbox...you can just drag MP3 (or other format) files into folders and play them. they won't be available uder apple's interface.

Bottom line, rockbox is not as easy to use or as efficient with power or processing as apple's firmware. You could blame apple for making the ipod/itunes such a closed platform, but we bought into it. I see rockbox on ipods as a nice bonus if you've already committed to an ipod, but if you buy an ipod just so you can use rockbox, I think you'll be disappointed.

Itunes isn't as much of a resource hog as our collective bitching would have you believe. Yeah, it's worse than winamp or foobar, but if you are running a computer that was made in the last 5 years it's not going to cripple it unless you are already running other memory intensive programs. I didn't want to buy into it but it's a pretty good tool for keeping tags and whatnot formatted properly for use on the ipod. There is nothing worse than an ipod with 17 different pearl jam entries. It just sucks for actually playing music on your PC.

Rockbox is ok, but i found it to be kinda glitchy and removed it from my 30GB ipod after a few months. The install wasn't too tricky as long as you know a thing or two about computers...to a n00b it would seem like rocket science though. I haven't bothered putting it on my 80 gig.

There are a couple of rockbox threads around here somewhere (either here or in the trading forum), because that's where i got the advice for installing it on mine. Good luck.

Thanks everyone for your help... I received my IPod a few days ago, I was so excited to get the thing up and running and BAM the damn thing is busted. Brand new IPod just sits there with a "clicking" sound after I turn it on, after a few seconds a white screen with a little ipod logo with X's for eyes saying visit http://www.apple.com/support I couldn't believe it, I was pissed, so I called the company that I purchased it from online and was told that they don't do any returns/refunds on Apple products, they must be returned to the manufacturer. I called up Apple and explained my situation and was told at first my warranty wouldn't be covered because the 5G ipod's were not supposed to be still sold and were out of warranty 1 year after production. I was finally able to get in touch with someone who was willing to listen to my predicament and after I faxed over a copy of my order form they ended up renewing my warranty from my purchase date. I received my package in the mail from Apple last night and my new Ipod is currently being shipped back to Apple before I even had a chance to use it

my boss got a 4gig nano and i was amazed at how thin it is, but i still like my lyra i bought from rca

1 Year warranty from the date of manufacture? Seriously weaksauce, dude. I guess they don't design them to last. If you're affluent enough to afford a new one, they must figure you'll be willing to shell out for the next generation in six months or so.

i had the exact same thing happen to me... but after i dropped it on my driveway after 2 years of use... so i had to buy a new one...
so ya... that didn't really add much to this conversation... and i'll be going now

In what ways can solid state mp3 players fail? I would imagine they'd last significantly longer than hard drive based players, but perhaps they have their own issues. (Outside of cost and capacity)

1 week to the day that I shipped out my Ipod to Apple for repairs, a brand new one arrived at my door yesterday! I've gone ahead and installed Itunes on my computer and will likely look into installing Rockbox at some point over the weekend. I'm on the fence now though if I even need to install it any longer as I didn't realize that the new Itunes has a gapless feature tool in the program. I tested it by ripping Dark Side last night and was thoroughly impressed with the gapless ability! The AAC files are much smaller than the FLAC's also which is nice. Another supposed drawback to Rockbox is the battery life is supposed to be much lower than running the normal Apple software. This isn't a huge concern because I doubt I'll be listening to my Ipod for 10 hours straight anyways, but it's something to keep in mind. I also loaded up an episode of Weeds onto the DAP and was pleasantly surprised at the video quality of the player. I'm sure I wont use it a ton either but it's nice to have whenever I'm taking long trips, a great way to pass the time Overall I was very impressed with Apple's service and their product thus far, though it's been less than 24 hours so give it time. My only gripe is that the EQ settings on the Ipod aren't customizable and all of the presets are terrible... oh well, I guess you can't win em all!

so theres ALAC also, no idea before today