Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 52.005,0.786 or 52°0'17"N 0°47'8"E |  | CO10 5NG |
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 04/11/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels 
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Digital television services are broadcast on a multiplexes (or Mux) where many stations occupy a single broadcast frequency, as shown below.
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 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.
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?
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
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 West | Transposer | 1000 homes +1000 or more homes due to expansion of affected area? | |
| Witham | Transposer | 14 km NE Chelmsford. | 118 homes |
How will the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 1 Aug 2018 | |||||
| B E T | B E T | B E T | E T | K T | |||||
| C29 | SDN | ||||||||
| C31 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C35 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C37 | ArqB | ||||||||
| C41 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C44 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C47 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C51tv_off | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C56tv_off | ArqB | ||||||||
| C58tv_off | SDN | ||||||||
| 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
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Thursday, 16 December 2021
C
Chris.SE11:54 PM
Aytch:
Hi, I'll keep a look out for your post then :)
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Tuesday, 28 December 2021
A
aytch11:40 AM
Hi! Hope you had a good / healthy Xmas. (and hoping the same for 2022!!)
(Bearing in mind my Freeview box will always occasionally "find" new channels and add them as a matter of course, which is not within my control)
...what I found after having selected during the day the main Sudbury multiplexes as recommended, was that by later in the evening, reception on some of the previously "more reliable" channels (BBC 1/2, ITV, Channel 4/5, Drama, Yesterday etc) now became degraded and this was only improved somewhat by doing a new but "complete" scan. Also quite a few other channels (Talking Pictures etc) were not available at all to me on the "Sudbury only scan".
Owing to my poor aerial set up it is quite normal to presume weather conditions are coming into play with the quality of reception I get - high winds, dense cloud, heavy rain all seem to affect it (and even seasonally - winter / summer, which might be pure coincidence....perhaps owing to bare trees blocking less signal - from where I am situated, on the distant horizon about 2 miles away there are woods in a direct line from my aerial to the Sudbury transmitter. Sorry for my technical ignorance about this assumption!!)
Anyway I am extremely grateful to you for your offers of advice.
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R
Richard Owen4:43 PM
Halstead
Please if Brian or others can answer this , if 2G is closed down in about 11 years time , can the frequency spectrum be used for TV or DAB ? They could " swap" the current 3 or 4G to the 2G spectrum instead ,which would make space available for more HD on freeview. 4 and 5G have already" nicked" part of the TV spectrum.
Also if BBC3 is coming back to Freeview, what channel on the guide will it use ?
It cannot return to HD as Channel 5 now occupies that HD slot as well.
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Richard's: mapR's Freeview map terrainR's terrain plot wavesR's frequency data R's Freeview Detailed Coverage
S
StevensOnln15:52 PM
Richard Owen: The spectrum is licenced to the mobile networks (they've paid large amounts of money at auction so haven't nicked anything) and the small amount that is currently used for 2G and 3G services will be reused for 4G and 5G. The 900MHz and 1800MHz bands used for 2G are above the highest frequencies ever used for Freeview (most of the capacity in the bands has already been reallocated to 3G or 4G) and are therefore outside of the frequency range that TV aerials and TVs/boxes are designed to receive. The 2100MHz band originally used for 3G is already being mostly reused for 4G and even 5G in some areas).
BBC 3 will be broadcast in HD on Freeview in England, but not Wales or Scotland where the soon to the launced S4C HD and BBC Scotland HD respectively (I'm not sure about Northern Ireland) in a timeshare with CBBC HD which will revert to closing at 7pm each evening. Channel 5 HD took BBC 3 HD's former channel number (LCN) but did not use the same broadcast capacity so will not prevent BBC 3 HD returning on Freeview. BBC 3 HD's LCN has not yet been announced although my guess is that it will be on 109 as that is the lowest unused number in the HD section of the EPG (unless BBC 4 HD, BBC News HD or BBC Scotland HD move to another number).
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Thursday, 30 December 2021
C
Chris.SE4:49 AM
aytch:
Hi aytch. Same to you, hope you've had a good and healthy Xmas and the same for 2022.
Now during the week following the 16th, there was a lot of tropospheric ducting around with the high pressure weather conditions at the time. A lot of people had problems with reception across many places in the UK.
Those conditions didn't clear until Thursday the 23rd.
Has your reception been more stable since then?
Weather conditions such as rain can have an effect with loft aerial installations, but providing you have sufficient signal it can go un-noticed. Trees on the line of sight can be an issue when close, but I would have thought that 2 mile away would not have a big effect
What would be useful as I don't think you've ever posted the information, would be to look in your TV's Tuning section - it may be a section called Signal Strength/Information ... or in the Tuning area.
If you can post the Signal Strength and Quality (or Bit Error Rate - BER) for each of those multiplex UHF channels. This will give a much better idea of how good the reception is.
As you know, your aerial configuration is far from ideal. Is it practical to run a separate downlead from the TV aerial?
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Wednesday, 5 January 2022
A
aytch3:00 PM
Happy New Year Chris (and every one!!)
Right it's as follows: (I scanned each twice just to be certain at 14.40 and conditions outside are cold still air with light cloud)
K29 Strength 95% Qual 86%
K31 " 95% " 100%
K37 " 80% " 100%
K41 " 95% " 100%
K44 " 95% " 100%
K47 " 0% " 0%
A separate cable could presumably be run down but it would require some kind of switching device at one end or the other to isolate it from the radio aerial which currently uses the same single cable.
(Before the radio aerial was added, I had much the same reception problems)
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Friday, 7 January 2022
C
Chris.SE2:24 AM
aytch:
Those figures are good except strange that K29 is down on quality a bit.
You have nothing for K47 because that's an HD multiplex and you need a T2/HD tuner for HD which yours obviously isn't.
I think the only way we are going to arrive at the best solution (and the most cost effective/cheapest) is for you to do some practical experimenting.
Now we have the DTT signal information for your existing set up. I don't know how you assess your FM reception - maybe by the weakest signal you get with acceptable noise? Whatever, make a note of it.
1) Disconnect the FM aerial coax from the TV aerial and then note the signal/quality figures for each TV channel again. Then connect the aerial direct to the TV without the amp and note the signal/quality for each channel again.
2) Remove the coax from the TV aerial and connect it to the FM aerial. Assess you FM reception, first without the amp (coax straight to the tuner) and then second with the amp.
3) Reconnect everything as you had it originally and post all the TV figures and your assessment of FM reception in both cases in 2) and compared to your original setup.
Then I'll try to make some further suggestions.
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A
Aytch3:04 PM
Hi Chris. Many thanks for the latest reply.
I will endeavour to "have a go" but can't promise when I will get time to "nip in and out" of the loft as my spare time is very limited at the mo and to make matters worse I have no loft ladder or Arctic-wear!!
Am very appreciative of your continued help!!
Will try to update in the very near future.
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Saturday, 8 January 2022
R
Richard Owen1:42 PM
Many thanks StevensOnln 1
I know the Mobile companies bought the spectrum , but I was hopeful of a Freeview expansion once 1 and 2G are switched off . What will be the guide number for SD BBC 3 , if you happen to know ?
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S
StevensOnln12:35 PM
Richard Owen: The 1st generation analogue mobile networks run by Cellnet (now O2) and Vodafone were closed down around 20 years ago and the frequencies were reused to expand capacity the 2G GSM digital networks. Those frequencies in the 900MHz range have never been used for broadcasting and are outside of the range that UHF TV aerials are designed to receive.
BBC Three's channel number hasn't been announced yet but according to Ofcom rules it has to be within the first 24 positions on Freeview (LCN 24 is currently used for BBC Four in Scotland and there are no lower unused numbers so there will have to be a reshuffle to accommodate BBC Three).
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