Sanyo boasts solution to still/video dilemma

Digital stills and digital video have never peacefully coexisted. Still camera makers have tried to elbow their way into camcorder makers' turf by incorporating video into their products. Meanwhile, camcorder producers have made stills part of their products' repertoire, too. These maneuvers have presented consumers with a dilemma. Should I get a still camera that takes mediocre video, they often must ask themselves, or a camcorder that takes mediocre stills? For many shooters, the answer to that question is to get one of each. But now Sanyo, with a quintet of new additions to its Xacti line, is bragging that it has a one device solution to the still/video dilemma.

The first of the new hybrid cameras, the Xacti DMX-2000 (photo above) scheduled to reach retailers in February. It can capture eight megapixel stills and shoot high resolution, 1920 x 1080 video at 60 frames per second and 24 megabits per second. It stores its video, as do all the new Xacti units revealed by Sanyo, in AVC/H.264 format. That format makes it easy to share the video with devices like computers and media players.