Asus was largely responsible for the explosion of the netbook market, with their Eee PC line. The Eee PC was one of the most popular, and best selling, netbook lines. So it probably shouldn’t be a big surprise that the Eee Pad Transformer is doing well in the tablet market. It has a solid combination of features, on par with the other leading Android tablets (same screen size & resolution, same CPU, same OS) and arguably better HW specs than the iPad 2, a relatively low price – lower than the other Android tablets and the iPad 2, and great flexibility with the available keyboard dock – which basically makes it a netbook, something Asus knows how to do well.

Asustek’s tablet shipments are expected to grow further in the third quarter, the sources said. The company has requested its touch panel providers supply a monthly target of 400,000-500,000 units during the quarter, the sources noted.

Asus has apparently set an even loftier stretch goal of shipping 4-4.5 million tablets in the second half of the year, based on reported contract orders.

As you’re probably sick of hearing me say by now, I’m kind of stuck in an indecision loop between buying the Transformer or the Toshiba Thrive. They both have features the other does not that I find appealing.

Via PC World.

The best gadgets have certain qualities in common. They solve difficult problems simply and elegantly. They’re constantly ahead of the curve, adding new features before you realize you need them. And most important, they put you in control of your own digital destiny–so that you can make the decisions about what you want to do and how you want to do it.

Dan’s top five gadgets are: Apple iPod and iPhone, TiVo, iRobot Roomba, Sonos Sound System, and Nintendo Wii.

Seems like a respectable list to me. I would probably have few different choices, but each person has their own needs. TiVo would certainly be on my list as well, and probably my iPod.

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Both the Slingbox PRO-HD and SlingCatcher MSRP at USD$299.99, but the best deals I’ve seen on both are from PROVANTAGE – currently Slingbox PRO-HD for $241.70 and SlingCatcher for $240.47.

Finally: the home television aspect of the “four converged screens” example.

“The trickiest part of the four screens is the sync between home video content and the mobile,” Balsillie said. “I believe the key enabler here is TiVo.”

RIM announced a new partnership with TiVo at CTIA, and the companies plan to release an application that will enable users to users to access television content via mobile device.

“(BlackBerrys) now work with TiVo desktop software that allows you to put (TV) shows on your BlackBerry, so that you can literally have your shows as a cache.”

It sounds like it is simply TiVoToGo supporting the Blackberry for video transfers. Which is what most of the speculation has been.

We’ve already seen prototypes of 100GB and 200GB evolutions of Blu-ray. Now Pioneer has pushed Blu-ray technology to 400GB! Both PC World and TechRadar UK reported on the development. Best of all, it is reportedly backward compatible with today’s Blu-ray hardware. In theory that means existing drives could handle the higher capacity media with a firmware update.

Pioneer has achieved this capacity by stacking sixteen 25GB layers, compared to the two 25GB layers on a standard Blu-ray disc. They’ve done this by solving the interference issue which results from stacking an increasing number of data layers on top of each other. But they’ve managed to do so using the same optical specifications of the objective lens, maintaining Blu-ray compatibility.

Expanded capacity like this would likely first be used in data applications, for backup, etc. While some unusually long films might be able to use more than 50GB for HD home video, 50GB is enough for most videos up to 1080p. But there are already newer video standards appearing, such as 3D video or 4k video, which is 4096×1716. That’s the resolution used for digital cinema projection in movie theaters, and it is nearly 3.5x the resolution of ‘Full HD’ 1080p home video. When you go to higher resolutions and/or add data to support 3D displays, then you need higher capacity media.

Backwards compatibility could be useful as such discs could use the ‘top’ two layers just like a standard Blu-ray disc that would work in any existing player. While the remaining layers could be used for newer standards like 4k or 3D, and work in newer players that support those technologies.