I couldn't get on with itunes and find that winamp does the job better for me, I use it for all my music needs anyway and at 120gb, I can just about sync. my whole collection, which, if the need arose, I could use as a back up. I don't download a great deal and do so from Amazon.
I found the video facility, together with a scart adaptor, particularly useful for hotel stays and use Videora ipod converter to encode.