Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter
Brian Butterworth first published this on - UK Free TV
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.
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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, 26 May 2011
Nick: The whole point of wideband aerials is that with digital reception it doesn't matter if you pick up "out of group" channels, as this was a interference problem that belongs only to the analogue domain.
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Friday, 27 May 2011
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Nick7:14 AM
Thanks Brian.
I am not certain it tells me which channels the foreigners are on. I will install yet again and see if I can find out.
The wideband aerials are a compromise as it is not possible to get max gain across channels which use elements and spacings almost twice the length at channel 21 from 68. The graph of their performance tails off at the extreme ends, but not so much as if you try a mid group aerial instead, eg, group B. However, the performance graph also shows that their performance, say on group B, is lower than using a group B aerial. So if you look only at the BBC and ITV channels, which hopefully will be all within the old group B, your signal for these channels is worse with wideband. Hope that makes sense.
Where can I find a full explanation of 'signal quality?'
Best wishes.
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Nick: Please don't get hung up about "maximum gain", this is not an analogue service, the quality of the picture and sound will not improve.
As long as you have stable reception above the threshold of reception, you have a perfect service. Below that threshold, nothing.
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Saturday, 28 May 2011
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Nick7:30 AM
Thanks, Brian, I appreciate that.
I would like to know, though, where to find the definition of signal quality. Since you mentioned that a booster can reduce this, I have been concerned. My box does not show me signal quality. The Sky box shows both. Sometimes the quality is low yet reception good.
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Nick: The signal quality actually refers to the BER, the Bit Error Rate, which is the number of bits transmitted before a error is made.
The planning standard has a BER of 10^7 (ie, one error every ten million bits).
As the transmissions have Forward Error Correction (FEC) in them, this error can be detected and corrected.
Most Freeview devices will show this as "quality: 100%".
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Monday, 30 May 2011
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Nick6:57 AM
Um. Thank you Brian. If you could briefly tell me what affects it I would be grateful. Can I have a good signal yet poor quality? It seems I get a good signal on some channels yet poor quality and thus no picture. I do not understand why.
After plaguing you with questions, you might be interested to know I have bought a flat screen. I now get an intermittent picture from stations on c68. The box, though, still refuses to find anything there. [same aerial.]
The curious thing is that on my inferior aerial, the box finds channels on most mux, yet the flat screen finds nothing at all, although it hangs around the stronger groups trying, before telling me nothing found.
I cannot tell you more about the foreign channels. Since reinstalling they have gone.
Kind regards.
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Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Nick: Like I said, the signal strength does not matter, ONLY the signal quality is required for digital reception.
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Nick10:09 AM
Thanks Brian, but I still do not understand what can cause quality to be poor yet signal good, and what can be done about it. Can you refer me to some document that explains?
Do you know why the Sky pic on a flat screen is less sharp than Freeview?
Also, why is the freeview sound a couple of secs behind analogue? It is not bouncing off a satellite.
Many thanks, kind regards, Nick.
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Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Nick: Right. This is an excellent document to read if you want to understand more about what effect the signal - http://tech.ebu.ch/webdav/site/tech/shared/tech/tech3348.pdf .
Sharpness is not necessarily a good thing - if your TV has a "sharpness" setting, turn it off or right down.
All digital signals require compression and packetizing - see How digital television works | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice - there always has to be a buffer for this to work efficiently.
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Nick11:47 PM
Brian, as expected, the analogue picture on flat screen is worse than on crt, freeview is good where available but Sky is somewhere in between, quite blurred. I thought that it would be as good as freeview, so I could see the missing channels clearly. My local retailer says freesat is clearer and believes Sky deliberately blur the picture to encourage people to pay for their hd. Is this true? Many thanks.
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