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Full Freeview on the Beacon Hill (Torbay, England) transmitter

first published this on - UK Free TV
sa_streetviewGoogle Streetviewsa_gmapsGoogle mapsa_bingBing mapsa_gearthGoogle Earthsa_gps50.446,-3.611 or 50°26'45"N 3°36'40"Wsa_postcodeTQ3 1RT

 

The symbol shows the location of the Beacon Hill (Torbay, England) transmitter which serves 84,000 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.

This transmitter has no current reported problems

The BBC and Digital UK report there are no faults or engineering work on the Beacon Hill (Torbay, England) transmitter.

Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name
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Which Freeview channels does the Beacon Hill 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- (657.8MHz)284mDTG-20,000W
Channel icons
1 BBC One (SD) South West, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 17 others

PSB2
D3+4
 H max
C41+ (634.2MHz)284mDTG-20,000W
Channel icons
3 ITV 1 (SD) (West Country), 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 (West Country), 71 That’s 60s,

PSB3
BBCB
 H max
C47+ (682.2MHz)284mDTG-20,000W
Channel icons
46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD South West, 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 -3dB
C42 (642.0MHz)285mDTG-810,000W
Channel icons
20 U&Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 GREAT! action, 57 U&Dave ja vu, 58 ITV3 +1, 59 ITV4 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 TRUE CRIME, 68 TRUE CRIME XTRA, 81 Blaze +1, 83 Together TV, 91 WildEarth, 93 ITVBe +1, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 251 Al Jazeera English, 255 FRANCE 24 (in English), 265 Rok Sky +1, plus 29 others

COM5
ArqA
 H -3dB
C45 (666.0MHz)285mDTG-810,000W
Channel icons
11 Sky Mix, 17 Really, 19 U&Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 Sky Arts, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 U&Drama +1, 65 That's TV 2, 70 Quest +1, 74 &UYesterday +1, 76 That's TV 2 MCR, 233 Sky News, plus 13 others

COM6
ArqB
 H -3dB
C40 (626.0MHz)285mDTG-810,000W
Channel icons
12 Quest, 25 U&W, 27 U&Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! christmas, 56 That's TV (UK), 63 GREAT! romance mix, 73 HobbyMaker, 75 That's 90s, 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)

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

regional news image
BBC Spotlight 0.8m homes 2.9%
from Plymouth PL3 5BD, 37km west (262°)
to BBC South West region - 107 masts.
regional news image
ITV West Country News (West) 0.8m homes 2.9%
from Plymouth PL7 5BQ, 30km west (260°)
to ITV West Country region - 107 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 50% evening news is shared with West Country (East)

Are there any self-help relays?

LannacombeActive deflector25 km SW Torbay4 homes

How will the Beacon Hill (Torbay, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

1984-971997-981998-20092009-132013-182013-1727 Mar 2019
C/D EC/D EC/D EE TE TW TK T
C33com7com7
C34com8com8
C40ArqB
C41D3+4
C42SDNSDNSDNSDN
C44BBCA
C45ArqAArqAArqAArqA
C47BBCB
C51tv_offArqBArqBArqB
C53tv_offC4wavesC4wavesC4waves+D3+4+D3+4+D3+4
C57tv_offBBC1wavesBBC1wavesBBC1waves+BBCB+BBCB+BBCB
C60tv_offITVwavesITVwavesITVwaves -BBCA-BBCA
C63BBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBC2waves

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 8 Apr 09 and 22 Apr 09.

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

Analogue 1-4 100kW
BBCA, D3+4, BBCB(-7dB) 20kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB(-10dB) 10kW
com7(-11.4dB) 7.3kW
Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*(-17dB) 2kW
Mux C*, Mux D*, com8(-20dB) 1000W

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Beacon Hill transmitter area

Apr 1961-Dec 1981Westward Television
Jan 1982-Dec 1992Television South West (TSW)
Jan 1993-Feb 2004Westcountry 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. Beacon Hill 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
Friday, 3 July 2020
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

1:01 AM

Tony Barrett:

Beacon Hill is a Group B aerial. But you are not in a very good area for Beacon Hill. If it's the COM multiplexes you are after, then you are going to need a high gain (14/15dB or so) to stand much of a chance of reliable reception.
I assume you know there's a relay transmitter 2km south of you which would of course give you reliable reception of the PSBs.
With an aerial pointed at Beacon Hill (horizontal polarisation) ~SSE bearing 161 degrees, you may/may not still get a signal off the Liverton relay (which is a Group A vertical polarisation but very low power) as it's close.
Note, you will not get as much gain with a Group T, K, or Wideband compared to a good quality Group B.
Also note, there's no COM7/8 at Beacon Hill or other local transmitters (COM8 has closed in any event).

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Chris.SE's 4,335 posts GB flag
Friday, 7 August 2020
C
Chris Mellor
4:47 PM

Is there a problem with beacon hill transmitter, as I have no signal for channels like BBC2, ITV3,Film 4 (ch.14) etc.
I have manually tried to retune these (by retuning frequency 41 for example all to no avail.

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Chris Mellor's 1 post GB flag
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

11:18 PM

Chris Mellor:

The BBC aren't reporting any transmitter problems and the transmitter isn't currently listed for Planned Engineering. Note BBC2 & ITV3, Film4 are on different multiplexes so it's possible it could be some of the variable intermittent "Troposheric Ducting" that is around at present that's been quite strong in parts of the SW causing interference from distant transmitters.
(See https://www.bbc.co.uk/rec….jpg ).
It's never a good idea to retune when you have no signal as all that usually does is to clear the correct tuning, and you'll need to retune again when conditions stabilise (you might need to try more than once!).

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Chris.SE's 4,335 posts GB flag
Sunday, 16 August 2020
R
Robert Connolly
4:38 PM

hi,

we had a storm in wigan a few days ago and it shut off the tv, upon turning it on i had lost all signal for channels, i have re-scanned and retuned but i am not finding any BBC/ITV Channels. I have unplugged the cable, and done re-scans, and I have manually retuned to try and get them to come on, but nothing is appearing - any idea what the issue could be ?

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Robert Connolly's 1 post GB flag
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

5:34 PM

Robert Connolly:

How long was a few days ago?
You say Wigan, I assume that is Greater Manchester even though you've posted on a Devon transmitter page!
If your "few" days ago was before August the 12th, there was a major retune event on the 12th where remaining multiplexes were moved down to lower channels, the process was started back in February.

Before this did you have the BBC channels at 751,752 etc in your programme guide, or were they at the normal 1, 2, 9 etc.?

For the Winter Hill transmitter, here are the UHF channels for all multiplexes -
Local Liverpool, Local Manchester, Local Preston, Manchester GI on C21, C24, C40, & C27.
The main multiplexes are as previously listed C32, C34, C35, C29, C31, C37, C55 for PSBs1-3, COMs 4-7.

Were those the ones for which you tried a manual tune? Which Local multiplexes you may get will be postcode dependent. If you aren't getting some of those, please say which ones.

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Chris.SE's 4,335 posts GB flag
Sunday, 11 October 2020
S
Stephen Fielding
9:19 AM

Why can't I get channel 50 sony xmas movies from the beacon transmitter

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Stephen Fielding's 1 post GB flag
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

9:00 PM

Stephen Fielding:

Sony have this year renamed Sony Movies Classic as Sony Movies Christmas for the festive season, see Updates and alerts | Freeview they did a similar thing last year.
This channels (and some other Sony channels) Sony moved to Local multiplexes over a year ago.
For which channels are on which multiplex, see Channel listings for Industry Professionals | Freeview

Unless you live in an area that can receive a Local multiplex (have a local station at LCN 7 or 8 in your EPG) then you won't get this channel. There's only a small number of main transmitters that have local multiplexes most of which are beamed at larger centres of urban population.

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Chris.SE's 4,335 posts GB flag
Thursday, 14 October 2021
D
David Brewer
10:13 AM

there is a fault with all the DAB radio reception broadcast ( From Beacon Hill?) on the D1 network. SDL is fine.
This has been a problem for the past 4 or 5 days, across various DAB radios in cars and home, please can you investigate. ( The D1 network includes stations like Heart 80's, Absolute, Kiss etc) , constant drop out and loss of signal.

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David Brewer's 1 post GB flag
S
StevensOnln1
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

1:16 PM

David Brewer: Nobody from this independent technical help website can investigate a transmitter fault, as nobody posting here has any connection with any broadcaster or transmitter company. Reporting the fault to the radio stations affected might prompt somebody to investigate, particularly if they receive lots of reports of the same problem.

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StevensOnln1's 3,663 posts GB flag
Friday, 15 October 2021
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

11:23 PM

David Brewer:

No information available yesterday, but something must have been going on at Beacon Hill resulting in today's Engineering report.

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Chris.SE's 4,335 posts GB flag
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