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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Monday, 17 April 2023
S
StevensOnln19:43 AM
James Knights: I can't see any engineering work listed for Sudbury and although you are 38km away you are predicted to receive a strong signal on all multiplexes. Are both TVs connected to the same aerial? If so, is there either a powered amplifier or passive splitter to split the cable? As a starting point, it would be worth checking all the cables and connections as far as you can safely access and also check that the amplifier is powered on if there is one.
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Tuesday, 18 April 2023
N
nick6:17 AM
Chris SE,
I note your comment that certain areas may hage problems with SOME multiplexes. Why so? Surely if they have problems it will be with ALL multiplexes.
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N
nick6:18 AM
IfI get problems, they are worst with the multiplex using channel 37. Why?
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C
Chris.SE3:05 PM
nick:
It all depends on weather conditions, lay of the land, line-of-sight to various transmitters, whether the signals pass over largish areas of water etc. and which transmitters are co-channel.
RF propagation is very frequency dependent and also on the nature of the atmosphere at the particular time as well as the extent of any area with particular conditions, so one specific UHF channel may get propagated differently from another.
As you've never given a full postcode or one for a very nearby pub/shop/prominent building your predicted reception for C37 may be poorer than some of the others.
Your aerial may have a peaky response which is not as good for C37 as it might be for others (whether it's home brew or bought!). So all in all, difficult to know why, or indeed where particular interference may come from most of the time.
Whenever I glance at Dx reception reports from people on the east coast I don't recall C37 being mentioned, C39 is quite common. Trying to find out which Netherlands or other countries transmitters that side of the North Sea use particular channels is almost impossible as I can't readily find reliable sources.
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Wednesday, 3 May 2023
N
nick10:55 PM
Aldeburgh
Chris SE,
Thanks. IP15 5HG
Signal on all multiplexes is good, but 37 is the one that goes first. This is using any aerial,and odd because it is not at the exteme ends but nicely in the middle.
We don't use 39!
You seem to be suggesting the Dutch, my thought too.
Can you tell me where to look for the DATE we send our messages? Just seeing the time they are sent is no use!
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nick's: mapN's Freeview map terrainN's terrain plot wavesN's frequency data N's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Thursday, 4 May 2023
C
Chris.SE6:40 AM
nick:
Well the predictors give C37 COM6/ArqB predicted reception to be better than SDN or ArqA right across your postcode even though reception of all can change across the postcode, lower numbers doing slightly better. Very odd.
So why C37 usually goes first is a slight mystery. Not easy to find all transmitters that use C37.
(BTW C39 used by Tacolneston).
The date is above the post or block of posts if several on the same day!
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Tuesday, 9 May 2023
N
nick6:14 PM
Chris SE
Thank you for that info.
You say certain channels are KNOWN to be better than others. I wonder why they are not all the same. I can understand that on the higher frequencies there my be trouble, but we no longer have channel 60 which was always difficult.
We now, nationally, use a very few channels and in a tight group. How did they manage this and why did they not do it in the first place? We had to buy new aerials. We could have kept our old group B
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Friday, 12 May 2023
C
Chris.SE2:35 AM
nick:
Hi. I( suspect you are misreading/reading the wrong thing in what I said. According to the Freeview checker, your predicted reception of COM6 is better than COMs 4 & 5 which is why it's a bit surprising that you experience COM6 on C37 getting disrupted first.
Reception will vary across the postcode because of the changes in local(ish) terrain and it seems lower street numbers in your postcode fair slightly better according to the predictions!
No doubt the frequency planners will have had a bit of a nightmare in trying to decide on the best channels to use for specific multiplexes on various transmitters when considering co-channel interference, taking account of the obvious line-of-sight issues but also less common propagation due to temperature inversion and tropospheric ducting.
Whilst most of it is done by well established computer predictions, no doubt there'll have to have been some manual fine tweaking ....... and there are some instances were it is far from ideal which is of course why it wasn't done at the outset if that's what you meant by tight groups.
If you meant use of adjacent channels at a given transmitter, that's not a problem with digital, but analogue had to be spaced apart often 3 or 4 channels.
You would have struggled a bit with the Sudbury COM muxes at DSO as these were technically above Group B, a Group E aerial really being needed. And with the 700MHz Clearance those COMs moved right down the band where then a Group K was required.
It was because it was known that these types of changes were likely to be needed in the future that back in the day a Wideband aerial was recommended, or a Group T when the 800MHz band was cleared, and now after 700MHz Clearance, as there's nothing above C48, a Group K is in effect the new wideband and in fact desirable to minimise the likelihood of mobile interference if you could be near a mobile mast using 700MHz.
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Thursday, 18 May 2023
N
nick6:15 PM
Chris SE
Thank you for your explanation.
Did you see my query about why we did not have the current reasonably close group of channels in the first place?
If it can be done now, why could it not be done then?
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C
Chris.SE10:50 PM
nick:
I can only assume because of the additional complex frequency planning that would have been needed.
At DSO (already an expensive business) the new high power multiplexes in most cases just replaced the analogue transmissions on their allocated channels and no additional (or adjusted) frequency planning was needed.
I'd also guess that since DSO the additional data and experience with digital propagation would have helped tweak the computer models used for such planning.
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