According to Rapid TV News, a new IMS Research study predicts that 255 million homes will have a high-definition TV (HDTV) by 2013, up from about 45 million at the end of 2007. Direct-to-home signals (DTH) will continue to be the leading platform for HDTV service, expected to grow by 27.5 percent annually until 2013. However, most households who purchase a HDTV will only watch HD on packaged media, such as Blu-ray discs. This is because about 62 percent of worldwide cable households are in the Asia Pacific region, which has been slow to switch from analog to digital cable TV service.

The region is expected to have 69.5 million HDTV households by the end of 2013, but just 41 percent of those will be on DTH platforms.