You’re taking great shots on the family vacation in Paris when suddenly, you decide to watch National Treasure? No, you didn’t just walk by a Cinema, you switched your Samsung hybrid to PMP mode.

Samsung is always pushing the envelope in digital video. A few years back they created the Xacti line of sports camcorders (Ed: I thought Sanyo did that?) which came with auxiliary lenses (one model even went wireless) and recorded directly to SD cards in MPEG4. Building on that attitude, Samsung’s i8 is the latest in a line of hybrid cameras that not only shoot digital stills with 8.1 mega pixel resolution, but can also work as an MP3 player or a media player that shows movies in MPEG4 or DivX format. And the Samsung Converter software that comes with it allows you to encode any movie into the right format.

And what’s really killer is that the onboard memory for the i8 is rumored to be around 200 MB, making it a serious contender for leaving the SD cards at home. Okay, maybe not in the age of 16GB SD cards, but that’s a lot of memory onboard. Not too thrilled with the tiny 2.7 inch LCD screen, but hey, with a cost of about $300 that tosses in a media and music player? That’s just wack.

Source: PMP Today