Topic: Do you have to use itunes with ipod?

[ScaryTooth]

My Mom wants to sell me an iPod that she won from some raffle or something for $60. I was thinking of getting it for Meg. As much as I really dont care for the whole iPod thing, $60 it's a bad deal for a new 2gb ipod nano. If anything, maybe I can sell it.

[idolminds]

No you dont have to use itunes. There are 3rd party programs to transfer music, I just dont know what they are named. There might even be a winamp plugin.

[Pugnate]

You know why that isn't a bad deal? Because basically for $60 you are getting a portable harddrive!

[ScaryTooth]

eh, I have no use for one. Megan would use it to listen to music at work or something. She usually just takes mine, heh.

[WindAndConfusion]

You know why that isn't a bad deal? Because basically for $60 you are getting a portable harddrive!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820233009

[Quemaqua]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820233009

I concur.

[Pugnate]

But does it let you play music?

[idolminds]

Its a floor wax and a dessert topping.

[WindAndConfusion]

That would be funnier if you knew when to turn away from divine ground.

[idolminds]

halp meh me dun no gramar! 

[ScaryTooth]

So, I got it for her. I have to be honest. I actually think it's pretty cool. It makes me want one for myself, I just don't have the money at the moment. I just love the interface. Sound quality is pretty decent too. All and all, it's a nice little gizmo. But still, the price. My little Zen Nano, has a ton of features. I can record from any input, it has voice recording, FM tuner, you can record from the FM tuner by the way, it has great sound. Last about 20 hours on a single AAA battery, very nice simple, easy to use software. And it was only $60. If it had an interface like the iPod it would be the best thing ever. Really, thats the main thing it has going for it, but let me tell you, it's almost enough to warrant it's purchase.

[gpw11]

You know, when I play around with the ipod I do really like the interface, but at the same time, I love the freedom the Creative players give me.  Note: I haven't tried any of the hard drive based creative players, so I can't say I feel the same way.  I won't buy a mp3 player that doesn't support drag and drop or have an fm tuner though.  Those are just things that need to be universal, and if my player doesn't have them then I feel like I'm just regressing back to the stone age. 

[scottws]

I was going to buy a Samsung K5 player and was pricing them.  It was about $250 for a 4GB model.  My sister, who was in town for the holidays, told me to check out iPod Nanos.  I wasn't really interested because I'm firmly against how Apple tries to lock you into the iPod once you get one, but then I saw they have an 8GB Nano now, and it too was $250.

I bought it immediately.  I love it.  I use iTunes, but only to sync my playlist.  I don't plan on ever using the iTunes Store and I still will rip all my music to MP3 with EAC+LAME.

To be honest, I'd like to move to AAC, but the MPEG group botched the tagging for that format, releasing the specifications well after the release of the actual format.  Now you have all kinds of incompatibilities.  iTunes uses its own tagging for AAC files.  Nero uses their own.  You can do APEv2 tags, but I think only Foobar2000 reads those.  No one seems to read or write the offical tagging standard defined by the MPEG group.

It's all pretty ridiculous, and Apple plays a hand in this.  They could easily update the software for iTunes and the iPod to read the other tagging formats.  Apple also decided they were going to rename the MPEG-4 container from the standard .mp4 to .m4a for audio-only files, and .m4v for video files.  The iPod (and iTunes?) won't even read AAC files ending in .mp4 which is crazy.

[idolminds]

Has anyone tried the Rockbox firmware?

[Cobra951]

Scott, I'd be all for everyone sticking to the most popular defined use of AAC tagging, even if that means giving Apple more undeserved validation.  Screw the MPEG group if they're the ones responsible for the confusion.

I thought the standard extension for AAC audio files is .m4a, while .mp4 was meant for video (with audio, of course).  The PSP now recognizes .m4a too.  This format is fairly new to me, though.  I know you are more experienced with these things.

[gpw11]

Has anyone tried the Rockbox firmware?

That's awesome!  One of my other major gripes about the 5 and 5.5 generation ipods is that the video support sucks.  You've got to reencode the video and what not whereas with the Vision: M you can just drop divx, xvid, or whatever files onto it and play them right away.  With firmware like this that may be possible on the ipods one day.

[Cools]

Probably not. Apple wants users to use it's version of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for iPod video. Mind you, it's one of the better codecs, but still would've been nice to be able to play something else without the reencoding step.