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Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter

first published this on - UK Free TV
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The symbol shows the location of the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter which serves 440,000 homes. The bright green areas shown where the signal from this transmitter is strong, dark green areas are poorer signals. Those parts shown in yellow may have interference on the same frequency from other masts.

Are there any planned engineering works or unexpected transmitter faults on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) mast?

Sudbury transmitter - Sudbury transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 25/03/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels Digital tick


Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name
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Which Freeview channels does the Sudbury transmitter broadcast?

If you have any kind of Freeview fault, follow this Freeview reset procedure first.

Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.

MuxH/VFrequencyHeightModeWatts
PSB1
BBCA
 H max
C44 (658.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
1 BBC One (SD) East, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 16 others

PSB2
D3+4
 H max
C41 (634.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
3 ITV 1 (SD) (Anglia (East micro region)), 4 Channel 4 (SD) South ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 South ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (Anglia east),

PSB3
BBCB
 H max
C47 (682.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD East, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Meridian Southampton), 104 Channel 4 HD South ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 107 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others

COM4
SDN
 H max
C29 (538.0MHz)186mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
20 Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 GREAT! action, 57 Dave ja vu, 58 ITVBe +1, 59 ITV3 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 TRUE CRIME, 68 TRUE CRIME XTRA, 78 TCC, 81 Blaze +1, 83 Together TV, 89 ITV4 +1, 91 WildEarth, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 267 Al Jazeera English, plus 30 others

COM5
ArqA
 H max
C31- (553.8MHz)228mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
11 Sky Mix, 17 Really, 19 Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 Sky Arts, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 Drama +1, 65 That's TV 2, 70 Quest +1, 74 Yesterday +1, 75 That's 90s, 233 Sky News, plus 11 others

COM6
ArqB
 H max
C37 (602.0MHz)228mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
12 Quest, 25 W, 27 Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! romance, 56 That's TV (UK), 61 GREAT! movies extra, 63 GREAT! romance mix, 71 That’s 60s, 73 HobbyMaker, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 84 PBS America, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 18 others

DTG-8 64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)

The Sudbury (Suffolk, England) mast is a public service broadcasting (PSB) transmitter, it does not provide these commercial (COM) channels: .

If you want to watch these channels, your aerial must point to one of the 80 Full service Freeview transmitters. For more information see the will there ever be more services on the Freeview Light transmitters? page.

Which BBC and ITV regional news can I watch from the Sudbury transmitter?

regional news image
BBC Look East (East) 0.8m homes 3.2%
from Norwich NR2 1BH, 77km north-northeast (24°)
to BBC East region - 27 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
regional news image
ITV Anglia News 0.8m homes 3.2%
from NORWICH NR1 3JG, 78km north-northeast (24°)
to ITV Anglia (East) region - 26 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (West)

Are there any self-help relays?

Felixstowe WestTransposer1000 homes +1000 or more homes due to expansion of affected area?
WithamTransposer14 km NE Chelmsford.118 homes

How will the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

1984-971997-981998-20112011-131 Aug 2018
B E TB E TB E TE TK T
C29SDN
C31ArqA
C35C5wavesC5waves
C37ArqB
C41ITVwavesITVwavesITVwavesD3+4D3+4
C44BBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBCABBCA
C47C4wavesC4wavesC4wavesBBCBBBCB
C51tv_offBBC1wavesBBC1wavesBBC1waves
C56tv_offArqB
C58tv_offSDN
C60tv_off-ArqA

tv_off Being removed from Freeview (for 5G use) after November 2020 / June 2022 - more
Table shows multiplexes names see this article;
green background for transmission frequencies
Notes: + and - denote 166kHz offset; aerial group are shown as A B C/D E K W T
waves denotes analogue; digital switchover was 6 Jul 11 and 20 Jul 11.

How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?

Analogue 1-4 250kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB(-4dB) 100kW
Analogue 5(-7dB) 50kW
Mux 2*(-14.9dB) 8.1kW
Mux B*(-15.2dB) 7.5kW
Mux 1*(-15.5dB) 7kW
Mux A*(-17dB) 5kW
Mux C*(-22.2dB) 1.5kW
Mux D*(-23.6dB) 1.1kW

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sudbury transmitter area

Oct 1959-Feb 2004Anglia Television
Feb 2004-Dec 2014ITV plc
Feb 1983-Dec 1992TV-am•
Jan 1993-Sep 2010GMTV•
Sep 2010-Dec 2014ITV Daybreak•
• Breakfast ◊ Weekends ♦ Friday night and weekends † Weekdays only. Sudbury was not an original Channel 3 VHF 405-line mast: the historical information shown is the details of the company responsible for the transmitter when it began transmitting Channel 3.

Comments
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Heinz
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

5:09 PM
Spalding

Sorry, that last paragraph shoul've read:

From 16/11/11, Arquiva B will move to UHF 63 and then operate at only 2.2kW until 27/6/2012 (when it changes to UHF 56).

link to this comment
Heinz's 25 posts GB flag
Heinz's: mapH's Freeview map terrainH's terrain plot wavesH's frequency data H's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Dale
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

8:27 PM
Ipswich

Heinz : the information at the top of this page DOES mention the lower power of ArqA, ArqB and SDN. I quote :

NOTE: ArqA starts up at DSO 2 (20 July) at 3kW, replacing Mux C on C54 at 1.5kW, 'until further notice'. ArqB starts up at DSO 2 at 2.2kW replacing Mux D on C50 at 1.1kW, moves to C63 (at 2.2kW) on 16 November. NOTE: SDN will temporarily operate on channel 49 (at 14kW ERP) from the first stage of Sudbury's switchover until mid-2012. Arqiva A will remain on its preswitchover channel (54) from switchover until mid-2012. Arqiva B will remain on its pre-switchover channel (50+) until late 2011, and then temporarily move to channel 63 (at 2.2kW ERP), before adopting its final allocation of channel 56 during mid-2012



link to this comment
Dale's 78 posts GB flag
Dale's: mapD's Freeview map terrainD's terrain plot wavesD's frequency data D's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Sunday, 19 June 2011
W
W Butcher
1:19 PM
Colchester

Re. my post of March 29th about Freeview signal in the Tiptree area from Sudbury.I have installed a Labgear 450 wideband aerial for my inlaws and now they get all channels fine,seems like a decent bit of kit.

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W Butcher's 2 posts GB flag
W's: mapW's Freeview map terrainW's terrain plot wavesW's frequency data W's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Heinz
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

5:07 PM
Spalding

Yes, Dale, I fully appreciate the 3kW information is on here and experience suggests it's likely to be accurate.

However, the 25/5/11 Ofcom Issue 3.0 PDF make no mention (AFAICS) of that 3kW restriction.

I may have missed it but I did a word search for '3kW' and found nothing (whereas a search for '2.2kW' did find that in relation to the temporary use of UHF 63 later this year).

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Heinz's 25 posts GB flag
Heinz's: mapH's Freeview map terrainH's terrain plot wavesH's frequency data H's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Monday, 20 June 2011
Heinz
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

10:20 AM
Colchester

I've just tried a Google search for "Sudbury 2kW" too - and the only results are to text on this site (i.e. there's nothing on official sites).

Bearing in mind that this is a private site run solely by Brian and that he's on holiday for 2 weeks now, it's not possible to ask him where he got the information from.

DSO1 @ Sudbury will be imminent anyway by the time her gets back but I'm sure he'll pick up on this.

link to this comment
Heinz's 25 posts GB flag
Heinz's: mapH's Freeview map terrainH's terrain plot wavesH's frequency data H's Freeview Detailed Coverage
M
Mike Dimmick
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

11:55 AM

Heinz, Dale: We're trying to keep up with what's going on, but the only official documentation comes from Ofcom and they seem to be following what the broadcasters do, not leading.

There is more information - from which a lot of that commentary came - in the "Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Stations for Multiplex Licences" documents at Ofcom | Supplementary licence documents in relation to DSO . These now form part of the licences to broadcast. However, the notes are truncated badly for version 2 and fairly badly for version 3 on Mux A/SDN.

The version 3 document confirms Mux C/Arqiva A on C54 at 3kW and Mux D/Arqiva B on C50 at 2.2kW from DSO 2. Digital UK's postcode checker (which is run by the broadcasters) confirms this, but indicates that both will change mode to 64QAM 2/3 from the current 16QAM 3/4. The new mode requires about 4 dB more signal-to-noise ratio than the old mode. A doubling of power is 3 dB, so there will be a small reduction in the covered area, but not as much as if the power levels were left unchanged.

At other sites Arqiva have swapped their multiplexes A and B around, so that Arqiva B (which carries Sky Sports) gets the better channel/the one which can get a power increase earlier. Before switchover Sky Sports 1 and 2 are carried by the BBC on their second multiplex; if ArqB doesn't go to 64QAM 2/3 at DSO 2, these channels have no home because BBC B is changed to DVB-T2 256QAM 2/3 for HD channels.

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Mike Dimmick's 2,486 posts GB flag
M
Mike Dimmick
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

1:00 PM

Heinz: Digital UK's predictor shows that you are well within the covered area, a prediction of 99-100% across the board, and I would say that any problems that occur at switchover are likely to be down to too much signal. This is particularly the case at Sudbury, where the peak power reduction from analogue to digital is only 4 dB, whereas at most sites it is 7 dB.

The average digital power is actually higher than analogue, because the peak-to-average ratio is much smaller for digital than for analogue. The analogue transmissions could also be, and are/were, synchronized so that the channels were not all transmitting at peak power at the same time, whereas digital transmissions cannot be synchronized in this way. You can get an idea of how digital signals combine from BBC White Paper 156, DVB-T and Voltage Ratings of Transmission Equipment at BBC RD - Publications - White Paper 156 DVB-T and Voltage Ratings of Transmission Equipment , and how that differs from analogue in White Paper 126, titled 'Co-axial Cables' at BBC RD - Publications - White Paper 126 : Co-axial cables (see section 10 on p17).

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Mike Dimmick's 2,486 posts GB flag
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Transmitter engineering
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

10:34 AM

SUDBURY transmitter - Freeview BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:18 today to 09:31 today BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:00 today to 09:06 today [BBC]

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Transmitter engineering's 149,799 posts xx flag
Transmitter engineering
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

10:34 AM

SUDBURY transmitter - Freeview BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:18 today to 09:31 today BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:00 today to 09:06 today [BBC]

link to this comment
Transmitter engineering's 149,799 posts xx flag
Transmitter engineering
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

3:36 PM

SUDBURY transmitter - Freeview BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:00 today to 09:06 today BBC Digital TV (One, Two, Three, CBBC, News) Off Air; DSO related from 09:18 today to 09:31 today [BBC]

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Transmitter engineering's 149,799 posts xx flag
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