D66 asks Parliamentary questions about online availability of HD images NPO

The D66 has asked parliamentary questions about NPO Start Plus, the payment service of the public broadcaster. For example, the party wants to know why some images are not generally available, but also why HD images are only made available with the paid version.

D66 also wants to know what it would cost if HD images were made available to all users of NPO Start. On behalf of D66, Member of Parliament Jan Paternotte put the parliamentary questions to State Secretary Dekker of Education, Culture and Science. Paternotte wants to know from the State Secretary how not to make HD images available to non-paying users can be defended.

Dekker has to answer, among other things, whether the server capacity for making HD images available to everyone costs significantly more than maintaining the infrastructure for the paid version of NPO Start, called NPO Start Plus. With this, Paternotte seems to suggest that HD images should be made available to everyone. Earlier, a spokesperson for the NPO already said that asking for a monthly fee is mainly related to rights issues, and that offering the stream in HD quality only entails a small increase in costs.

There has been a lot of talk about the image quality of the online service of the public broadcaster for some time, mainly because of the low resolution and bitrate. For a long time, a maximum image quality of 342p was offered. Earlier this month, the NPO increased the image quality to 570p, and also announced NPO Start Plus. For 2.95 euros per month, users can watch programs from the public channels in HD quality up to a year after the broadcast.