Why bother with fancy, expensive storage sucking HD camcorders when you can record in standard definition and upscale in playback through an HDMI cable? That’s Samsung’s philosophy with the release of two flash memory camcorders, the SMX-K40 and SMX-K44.

The two sport healthy sounding 52x zoom Schneider-Kruznach lenses that you can tweak out to 65x if you’re happy to use the digital intelli-zoom which is designed to hold on to some of that quality that’s usually lost to pixelation. Then shoot up to 10 hours and 20 minutes on the 16GB SSD, if using the SMX-K44, or however much you like if you’ve got the SMX-K40 with its zero onboard storage and gaping SD/SDHC card slot.

Naturally, there’s image stabilisation so that you can actually hold the picture steady at maximum zoom and there’s even a YouTube button so that you can flaunt share you vids, you generous soul, you.

Both are out next month which is August 2009 in case you’re reading in the future. If you do happen to be in the future then please tell us what it’s all like. Do we have flying cars yet, do hover boards exist and any of the next few years Grand National winners would be most helpful.

Better pictures and prices when Samsung pull themselves together

Samsung