A new IMS Research study forecasts that high-definition TV will grow from 45 million homes to 255 million homes by 2013. While HD TV sets will be available, it is expected that households will watch HD on packaged media.

As a result IMS forecasts that Blu-ray disc drives will become “more common” in PCs over the next five year, and help generate a $46bn revenue stream for Blu-ray.

Shane Walker, IMS analyst and author of the study, states: “DTH continues to be the leading platform for HDTV service uptake due to its rapid transition from analogue to digital households and increased HD content availability. HD DTH households are forecast to grow on average at 27.5% annually, reaching 97 million households at the end of 2013. The most significant service uptake is expected prior to 2010, after which time the HDTV household growth rate is expected to fall below 30% annually.

“Approximately 62% of the worldwide cable households are located in the Asia Pacific region. Because of this, the slow conversion from analogue to digital cable TV service in the Asia Pacific region is significantly skewing the worldwide forecast for HD cable households.”

HDTV households in the Asia Pacific region are expected to reach 69.5 million at the end of 2013, 41% of these are expected to be on DTH platforms, according to IMS.