I was surprised too! I think the large Asian population here,
along with the popularity and saleability of Asian DVD's, have
fuelled the market.
There are now tons of Japanese dramas with English subtitles now
when previously, there were only traditional Mandarin subtitles
which yours truly couldn't handle.
Better still, they are packaged much better than the DVD's back in
SG - they are all compressed DVD's so the packaging is small and
compact and an entire Korean / Jap / Taiwanese / China drama is in
one or two DVD's only! 
Not bulky at all, and affordable too!
So the TV reception in my area might be crappy but who's
complaining?
