Major update to UK Free TV Freeview reception prediction system

UK Free TV now has a new, improved system for showing the transmitters you can receive signal from - including a new graphic display system to show cross-section diagrams - and it now includes Saorview (free terrestrial TV in Ireland) transmitters.

^{Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV 5th March 2012 at 14:35}

UK Free TV will celebrate ten years of helping people with their television reception this summer, and today's changes to the reception prediction system is the third major change to the system in that time.

As before, you can still enter a UK postcode, national grid reference or a pair of latitude and longitude co-ordinates into the box at the top right corner of every page here on UK Free TV to ask for a reception prediction.

The reception information page is now divided into three sections, with a toolbar to select the three ways of viewing the information:

Mapping

The mapping page shows the transmitters that you can receive a signal from, assuming that your TV aerial is mounted 20 meters above ground level.



The coverage area for the transmitter that provides the strongest signal for the location is shown, and you can single-click on transmitters to show other coverage areas.

Terrain plot

The terrain plot shows each of the masts that a signal can be received from, with the most powerful signal (from Multiplex 1, PSB1 or Saorview 1) shown first, with the rest in order.



You can click on the plots to see full details for the transmitter. The baring and aerial position is shown in the top right hand cover of each plot. See Transmitter symbol improvements on UK Free TV for full details of all the transmitter symbols used.

These graphics are using HTML5 canvas and will not display in very old web browsers.

Full details

As before, you can also view the technical information about reception in one of five ways: by direction, by signal strength (again, strongest first), by transmission frequency (lowest first), alphabetically by the service names or the alphabetically by transmitter names.



As before, you can click the "Aerial type" selections on the page to see the effect of using different aerial of different group types on your reception, and the date tabs to see past and future changes to reception.