Why is my subscribed podcast got greyed out podcasts that are never synched?

Question

I'm having lots of problems with iTunes, particularly the fact that I have a subscribed podcast with many podcasts within it, but most of them seem to be unchecked and greyed out. When I come to sync my iPod the iPod only contains 5 podcasts, when in my podcast folder there are 100s of files?!? It seems to download only the 1 most recent podcast. This is very fustrating to say the least! Where is the user friendliness of Apple's supposedly best product?

If this cannot be fixed, is there an alternative to iTunes, or is it possible to use windows media player with my iPod, this is painful!

Solution

If you select the name of a podcast that has greyed out episodes within it a "Get All" button will appear to the right of the podcast name. Click this to download all episodes. These will then be copied to your iPod when you next sync.