Revenues generated from HDTV content in Asia Pacific will grow from $3.67bn this year to more than $8bn by 2011, research firm In-Stat predicts, despite a current shortage of locally-made HD content. 

Japan and Australia are mainly broadcasting homemade HD programmes, but most other countries are relying more on imported content.

"Increasing acceptance of western culture in Asia means that the importation of international video content will offset the shortage of HD content developed in the region," wrote In-Stat analyst Alice Zhang in a recent white paper.

"International co-production is becoming a popular trend, providing better economies of scale as the international content is sold all over the world."

Only a tiny handful of the region's population of well over three billion have HDTV sets.

"There were 9.9 million TV households in the Asia-Pacific region receiving and watching HDTV programming at the end of 2006," said Zhang.

"All of these households were located in just five countries: Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore."

The 2008 Beijing Olympic games has helped boost HDTV interest in Asia's most populous nation of China, and the government has issued HDTV licences to two local broadcasters.

"In the future, we expect China to contribute heavily to HD market growth due to its huge pay-TV subscription base and strong government support for the service," said Zhang.