Well, when i was reading a preview from hi-tech.mail.ru i came across to this sentence :

View unconverted video (tested on formats avi, mkv - reproduction is without problems, delays). This is the first Symbian-powered smartphone with preinstalled codecs, which is a big plus. Nice to have this functionality out of the box, without installing additional applications.

While it's not true that N8 is the first symbian powered smartphone which can read avi out of the box...there were Samsung INNOV8 and OMNIA HD...but it's interesting to know that the N8 will join the family...

Every week a new proto firmware is out, i hope Nokia will just keep that for the commercial N8 ;)