The Dutch public broadcasters will launch HD versions of their three main national channels Nederland 1, 2 and 3 in HD on July 4. Ziggo will be the first cabler to distribute the channels.
With native HD coverage of this year’s Tour de France, the Dutch public broadcasters will kick-off regular HD broadcasts of the three national channels. A number of programmes will be in native HD, while all other programmes will be upscaled.
Ziggo will be the first distributor to carry all three channels in HD. They will be available to all 1,118,000 digital homes at no additional cost. The public broadcasters expect other cablers to follow suit.
At the moment, cable operators UPC, Ziggo and CAIW, as well as DTH provider Canal Digitaal Satelliet, have an HD offer.
The Digitenne DTT service from KPN is as yet not able to transmit HD signals. Furthermore, the IPTV networks from KPN and Tele2 are not currently HD capable.