Considering Rockbox but...

[hermes_vb]

I'm seriously considering Rockbox for my 60GB iPod Photo. I have read a lot about it, but I still have one question...Do I still need iTunes to load the songs to my iPod or Rockbox does that too?

[bro2baseball]

You don't need iTunes. But you can use it if you want.

The way Rockbox works is a file browser. You drag and drop your music files into a folder on your ipod, click on them in rockbox... and they start playing.

bro2

[nimdae]

You CAN still use iTunes, but I recommend against it. iTunes will store the music in the backwards way it does no matter what firmware the iPod is running, meaning you will need to use tagcache to access that content.

[mdmania]

you would not regret it.  Rockbox is like saying Once you go Rockbox there is no turning back

[hermes_vb]

Thanks for the info. That's what I expected. I will still leave iTunes installed just in case somebody gives me another iTunes gift card (again).

[bk]

You won't be able to play DRM "protected" music with Rockbox (ie, tracks you buy from iTunes). If you absolutely must listen to these encumbered tracks you'll need to decrypt them into normal AAC files with jhymn/qtfairuse, etc.

Your best bet is simply to stay away from DRMed files and buy CDs.

[michael.conner]

JHymn/QTFairUse-decrypted files won't play in Rockbox, unfortunately, unless something has changed in the last month or so.  (Like you said, another reason to avoid DRM...)