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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Sunday, 19 June 2011
W
W Butcher1:19 PM
Colchester
Re. my post of March 29th about Freeview signal in the Tiptree area from Sudbury.I have installed a Labgear 450 wideband aerial for my inlaws and now they get all channels fine,seems like a decent bit of kit.
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W's: mapW's Freeview map terrainW's terrain plot wavesW's frequency data W's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Heinz
5:07 PM
Spalding
5:07 PM
Spalding
Yes, Dale, I fully appreciate the 3kW information is on here and experience suggests it's likely to be accurate.
However, the 25/5/11 Ofcom Issue 3.0 PDF make no mention (AFAICS) of that 3kW restriction.
I may have missed it but I did a word search for '3kW' and found nothing (whereas a search for '2.2kW' did find that in relation to the temporary use of UHF 63 later this year).
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Heinz's: mapH's Freeview map terrainH's terrain plot wavesH's frequency data H's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Monday, 20 June 2011
Heinz
10:20 AM
Colchester
10:20 AM
Colchester
I've just tried a Google search for "Sudbury 2kW" too - and the only results are to text on this site (i.e. there's nothing on official sites).
Bearing in mind that this is a private site run solely by Brian and that he's on holiday for 2 weeks now, it's not possible to ask him where he got the information from.
DSO1 @ Sudbury will be imminent anyway by the time her gets back but I'm sure he'll pick up on this.
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Heinz's: mapH's Freeview map terrainH's terrain plot wavesH's frequency data H's Freeview Detailed Coverage
M
Mike Dimmick11:55 AM
Heinz, Dale: We're trying to keep up with what's going on, but the only official documentation comes from Ofcom and they seem to be following what the broadcasters do, not leading.
There is more information - from which a lot of that commentary came - in the "Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Stations for Multiplex Licences" documents at Ofcom | Supplementary licence documents in relation to DSO . These now form part of the licences to broadcast. However, the notes are truncated badly for version 2 and fairly badly for version 3 on Mux A/SDN.
The version 3 document confirms Mux C/Arqiva A on C54 at 3kW and Mux D/Arqiva B on C50 at 2.2kW from DSO 2. Digital UK's postcode checker (which is run by the broadcasters) confirms this, but indicates that both will change mode to 64QAM 2/3 from the current 16QAM 3/4. The new mode requires about 4 dB more signal-to-noise ratio than the old mode. A doubling of power is 3 dB, so there will be a small reduction in the covered area, but not as much as if the power levels were left unchanged.
At other sites Arqiva have swapped their multiplexes A and B around, so that Arqiva B (which carries Sky Sports) gets the better channel/the one which can get a power increase earlier. Before switchover Sky Sports 1 and 2 are carried by the BBC on their second multiplex; if ArqB doesn't go to 64QAM 2/3 at DSO 2, these channels have no home because BBC B is changed to DVB-T2 256QAM 2/3 for HD channels.
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M
Mike Dimmick1:00 PM
Heinz: Digital UK's predictor shows that you are well within the covered area, a prediction of 99-100% across the board, and I would say that any problems that occur at switchover are likely to be down to too much signal. This is particularly the case at Sudbury, where the peak power reduction from analogue to digital is only 4 dB, whereas at most sites it is 7 dB.
The average digital power is actually higher than analogue, because the peak-to-average ratio is much smaller for digital than for analogue. The analogue transmissions could also be, and are/were, synchronized so that the channels were not all transmitting at peak power at the same time, whereas digital transmissions cannot be synchronized in this way. You can get an idea of how digital signals combine from BBC White Paper 156, DVB-T and Voltage Ratings of Transmission Equipment at BBC RD - Publications - White Paper 156 DVB-T and Voltage Ratings of Transmission Equipment , and how that differs from analogue in White Paper 126, titled 'Co-axial Cables' at BBC RD - Publications - White Paper 126 : Co-axial cables (see section 10 on p17).
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Monday, 27 June 2011
D
David4:13 PM
I live in Kesgrave (postcode IP5 2FS) and receive all Freeview channels from Sudbury with only occasional glitches.
I entered my postcode into "My Settings" and was very surprised to see that my "local" transmitter defaulted to Aldeburgh.
Nearly every aerial around here does point to Sudbury (just the odd one or two to Tacolneston) and absolutely none to Aldeburgh.
My mother in law lives in Ipswich (IP1)on high ground with a very good signal from Sudbury and yet her details also seem to default to Aldeburgh.
Is this anomaly simply because Aldeburgh (which only transmits an analogue signal at the moment) is the closest transmitter to us?
I'm not being picky but this does seem a bit odd to me!
(52.0619,1.2484)
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Tuesday, 28 June 2011
P
Peter Stonebridge11:52 AM
Ipswich
IP1 6RL, Chimney aerial installed around 4 years ago in readiness for C/O.
Have 4 year old Panasonic flat screen TV with Analogue plus DVB facilities. Occasional lockups on ITV, ch 4 and 5 on DVB. BBC seems fine. Have always used Teletext on analogue because it seems quicker, but now running on DVB in preperation for start of C/O next Wed, have noticed that quite often it is not possible to get T/Text. Is this a function of signal strength, will it improve after the C/O? The alternative of course is to use a digital box and leave TV selected to analogue on the basis that there is a fault on TV digital T/T decoder. I'm guessing that it would be cheaper to adopt the digi box method rather than pay a repair agent with all the problems of actually transporting a 32" flat screen TV to his workshop.
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Peter's: mapP's Freeview map terrainP's terrain plot wavesP's frequency data P's Freeview Detailed Coverage
N
nick12:20 PM
David, they don't seem to get everything right, even at my location, north of Felixtowe, east coast, they quote Aldeburgh whereas Sudbury is equal strength. Perhaps they forget that on analogue Sudbury dishes out 250kw but Aldeburgh only 10.
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M
Mike Dimmick1:18 PM
David: This site's predictions are unreliable, because it doesn't have knowledge of all the transmitters' radiation patterns, and doesn't have detailed terrain information. Use Digital UK's postcode checker, which is based on the BBC's 50 years of knowledge of how UHF signals travel across terrain, and computes interference from every other transmitter in the country.
It looks like you have clear line of sight to both Sudbury and Aldeburgh, so I'm guessing that the poor projected result for Aldeburgh is either down to the radiation pattern, or due to interference from Crystal Palace, which uses the same frequencies. From November until April, Aldeburgh BBC A will clash with ITV1 from Crystal Palace, while the other two multiplexes clash with low-power multiplexes at CP (though 'low power' at CP means 20 kW). After CP's switchover in April, they will clash with two high-power multiplexes.
You should get a solid PSB service from Sudbury after switchover, but the three commercial multiplexes (A/SDN, C/ArqA, D/ArqB above) will stay on their current channels with little change in power until after Bluebell Hill switches over next June. The prediction, from 20 July, for SDN is variable while no prediction is offered for ArqA and ArqB. After the channel change on 27 June 2012, the prediction for SDN and ArqA is good, but ArqB remains variable. A reception change is shown in 2013 which will drop the COM muxes to variable - this may reflect switchovers on the continent, which I believe DUK always show in 2013, whenever they really happen.
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Mike Dimmick2:15 PM
Peter Stonebridge: There is no standard way to access digital text and not all channels carry it. For BBC channels, press the red button on the remote. For ITV1, C4 and C5, press TEXT.
Your TV may show some indication that text or interactive applications are available on the channel. My Humax box shows an 'MHEG' indicator.
Subtitles are always accessed using the dedicated subtitles button on the remote.
Poor signal quality could lead to the MHEG data for the text service not all being decodable, though I would expect you to get some picture and sound break-up as well. If quality is right at the top of the so-called 'cliff edge' you can get poor picture quality without actual break-up, and there might be problems with MHEG at this quality level as well, but it's a very narrow range at which this happens.
DUK predict that your reception of the BBC mux is currently variable. It should improve to 'good' next week.
Do be aware that it is possible to have too much signal as well as too little, and users of Sudbury will be particularly likely to end up having too much signal as the post-switchover digital power is only reduced slightly from analogue, while much larger than pre-switchover digital levels.
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