Public broadcaster is not going to improve image quality Broadcast Missed – update

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The public broadcaster has no plans yet to increase the image quality of Broadcast Missed. That is what the organization behind the public broadcaster, the NPO, says. The paid version of Broadcast Missed, NPO+, on the other hand, is provided with HD quality.

“We have no plans to improve the image quality, at least not in the short term,” says spokesperson Charlotte Geurink of the NPO, the umbrella organization of the public broadcaster. Currently, Missed Broadcast can only be streamed at 162 to 342p resolution, where YouTube and Netflix already support high-bitrate 1080p streams. It is unclear which bitrate Broadcast Missed offers.

According to one anonymous source within a public broadcaster, the image quality is not improved because of a deal with the cable companies. They pay the public broadcaster for the transmission of the TV channels. “Now they can offer a higher image quality on their set-top boxes in Broadcast Missed,” said the source. “We would like to increase the quality, but the NPO is not allowed to do that, because he has concluded a deal for the entire public broadcaster.”

NPO+, the paid video streaming service of the public broadcaster, which should be available sometime early this year, will have better image quality. Initially, this will be about ‘TV quality’, says spokesman Geurink, although it is unclear what this means. At the end of 2014 or early 2015, the video streaming service should serve images with HD quality. NPO+ will serve series, films, documentaries and children’s shows that are not available on Uitzender Missed due to copyrights or costs. It is not yet known what a subscription to NPO+ will cost.

The better image quality of NPO+ also has consequences for NLZiet, the joint video streaming service of RTL, the NPO and SBS. That service merges the three separate video streaming services, with a viewer only having to pay once. Originally, the plan was that NLZiet would go live at the end of January, but that will probably be later.

Update, 08:48: Added cause information to the second paragraph.

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