Slingboxes hit Japan next month

Japan is the newest addition to the place-shifting community with an announcement that Sling Media's Slingbox will be available there starting on July 8th for a cost of 29,800 yen. Sling Media partnered with Itochu Corporation and I-O Data Device, Inc for distribution and marketing to assist with the rollout. Currently, Slingboxes are only available in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, so this is the first Sling push into the Far East. It will be interesting to see how the place-shifting television device does in Japan as digital satellite service is hitting the mobile phone market in a big way. I'd imagine that the Japanese cellular carriers will be as happy about this announcement as the MLB recently was. Regardless, this is great news for everyone in Japan that can't be home to watch "Iron Chef", or is that just a show over here? You'll have to "place-shift" your browser here for the full press release.

-kct