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Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter

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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 18/03/2024 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
Monday, 18 October 2021
Transmitter engineering
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

8:36 AM

Sudbury transmitter - Sudbury transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 18/10/2021 Possible Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]

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Transmitter engineering's 149,601 posts GB flag
Monday, 25 October 2021
Transmitter engineering
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

5:43 AM

Sudbury transmitter - Sudbury transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 25/10/2021 Possible Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels [DUK]

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Transmitter engineering's 149,601 posts GB flag
Friday, 12 November 2021
A
Aytchgee
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

3:29 PM

For the past 4 - 6 weeks my ITV and many freeview channels have cut out completely every day around 6p.m and only returned around 11p.m. at night. My BBC channels haven't been affected at all.
Retuning makes no difference to this situation.
I am in IP1 are and my aerial is pointed at Sudbury.
Although for years I have a very inefficient aerial setup, I have never had this problem for so long before. Any ideas why this is currently happening?
(I don't intend to spend any more money on improving reception as, from my point of view, allowing for 90% of programmes everywhere being repeats of repeats, I find it offensive even having to pay for a licence - we should all get a rebate for the past 10 years. If I could purchase a radio licence as in days of yore I would get rid of my tv!)

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Aytchgee's 23 posts GB flag
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

11:07 PM

Aytchgee:

As you may have noticed from the post before yours, Sudbury had been on Planned Engineering. That work should have been completed as the transmitter is no longer listed, but there have been occasions when we've found the lists to be inaccurate and it's always possible some work may still be continuing.

That said, assuming the work is complete, one thing that is never a good idea is to retune when you have no signal or badly pixellated picture as it will often just clear the correct tuning that you had, and you can end up tuned to a much weaker signal from another transmitter.

Check in your TV's Tuning Section that you are correctly tuned to the UHF channels for Sudbury -
The 6 main multiplexes are on UHF channels C44, C41, C47, C29, C31, C37 that's in multiplex order -
PSBs1/BBCA, PSB2/D3&4, PSB3/BBCB HD, COM4/SDN, COM5/ArqA, COM6/ArqB
There is a relay transmitter close by (although vertical polarisation) and you could have got mistuned to that for any of the PSB muxes.

You should normally get good signals from Sudbury, but if your loft aerial is still pointing through a party wall that won't be helping matters.

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Chris.SE's 4,093 posts GB flag
Saturday, 13 November 2021
A
aytchgee
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

3:53 PM

Hi Chris.
Many many thanks for your response. Much appreciated.
I made sure when I did retunings over the past month that they were after midnight when as many of the channels I can normally access would be available, as well as "adding them" as opposed to replacing them.
As a matter of interest - channel searches done during the time when I can't get most of my usual channels (all ITV + others on Freeview) only find around 30 - 40 (inc radio) yet when things currently "normalise" after 11 pm each evening, I find over a 100, although owing to my aerial inefficiency, many are never available to me anyway.
One odd thing I've always noticed - the BBC channels (which never seem to suffer from this current reception problem) have a time delay of around 20 seconds when selected before I am able to then flick over to another channel, unlike all the other freeview channels where there is no time lapse when flitting from channel to channel.

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aytchgee's 23 posts GB flag
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

9:46 PM

aytchgee:

Hmm. This sounds a bit odd.

I'm not sure that "adding" channels rather than "replacing" is the best option. If you happen to have got/be getting signals from more than one transmitter (several even) then "duplicates" for want of a better way of saying it, may be put in the 800 LCN range - and that might be some/many from Sudbury if the "correct" LCNs are already occupied by channels from another transmitter which may or may not be any longer receivable which could have been weather dependent!

Also having to try tuning late (after 11pm) could also be fraught with problems as certain types of maintenance work may be carried out over night and so not all muxes or channels may be available.

To start off, I'd suggest clearing all current tuning by unplugging the aerial and carrying out a full automatic retune. As no channels should be found, this should clear everything.
Plug the aerial back in and then carry out a MANUALtune of Sudbury's UHF channels as I listed in the previous post.

If for some reason you don't get anything on some of those channels, I'd try a manual tune on them at a different time - just in case there is some unpublished work going on OR the possibility of some sort of external interference.

Once correctly tuned to those UHF channels do NOT retune again. IF some programmes (LCNs) only appear to be watchable at certain time of day, make a note of which they are and when this is occurring and we'll have to consider the possibility of some sort of interference and how to investigate depending on the circumstances.

(As an aside, did you ever get a UHF/VHF diplexer for your aerials?).

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Chris.SE's 4,093 posts GB flag
Thursday, 18 November 2021
A
Aytchgee
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

5:09 PM

Hi Chris.
Waited a couple of days to see if there would be any improvement but alas no.
I cleared all the channels as you suggested by doing a factory reset and then re scanned. However I couldn't use your ref "C" numbers as my ageing set top freeview box only comes up with "K" number options.
Again yesterday ITV and the other problem channels all packed up around teatime - this time at 6.55p.m!! They had all returned by around 11p.m as usual.

(I didn't get round to getting a UHF/VHF diplexer for my aerials as my hifi radio signal is perfect and much less of a priority than tv)

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Aytchgee's 23 posts GB flag
A
aytchgee
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

5:22 PM

(I didn't get round to getting a UHF/VHF diplexer for my aerials as my hifi radio signal is perfect and much MORE of a priority than tv) Sorry - brain error!!

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aytchgee's 23 posts GB flag
Friday, 19 November 2021
C
Chris.SE
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

1:00 AM

Aytchgee:

Hi. I'm a bit baffled as to what your Freeview box "K" numbers are - not one in my experience, unless of course you mean kHz!
The "C" before the UHF channel number simply means "UHF channel". The only reason it is typed before the UHF number on THIS forum, is because if you hover over it, it will give you the channel frequency in MHz.
So go back to that earlier post and hover over each of those that I've listed, for kHz just put three 0s on the end!

My suspicion is that if you are allowing your box just to scan up through the frequencies (starting at 474000kHz) then there is a good chance that you may well be tuning to some/all of the PSB multiplexes from the Bramford relay transmitter and these will be weaker and less reliable as you aerial is set up for Sudbury.

If you box doesn't allow to scan specific frequencies one by one (manual tuning) then the "trick" here is if you can see the frequency that it's scanning at any one time, then leave the aerial unplugged until it's just gone passed 522000kHz and plug it in quickly as the first frequency you want is 538000kHz. Thereafter it can finish by itself.

I'll come back with another post about diplexers.

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Chris.SE's 4,093 posts GB flag
A
aytch
sentiment_satisfiedBronze

2:20 AM

When I get "5" I'll check out and write down what numbers etc come up on the screen to try to clarify things. (The box does allow for manual tuning)

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aytch's 23 posts GB flag
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