Full Freeview on the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 52.130,-0.242 or 52°7'47"N 0°14'33"W |  | SG19 2NH |
The symbol shows the location of the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmitter which serves 920,000 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 Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) mast?
Sandy Heath transmitter - Sandy Heath 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)
Which Freeview channels does the Sandy Heath 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)
Which BBC and ITV regional news can I watch from the Sandy Heath transmitter?
BBC Look East (West) 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Cambridge CB4 0WZ, 29km east-northeast (65°)
to BBC Cambridge region - 4 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
ITV Anglia News 1.0m homes 3.7%
from Norwich NR1 3JG, 119km east-northeast (60°)
to ITV Anglia (West) region - 5 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (East)
How will the Sandy Heath (Central Bedfordshire, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1965-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 12 Feb 2020 | ||||
| VHF | A K T | K T | K T | W T | W T | ||||
| C6 | ITVwaves | ||||||||
| C21 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C24 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C27 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C31 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C32 | com7 | ||||||||
| C33 | SDN | ||||||||
| C34 | com8 | ||||||||
| C35 | _local | ||||||||
| C36 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C39 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C43 | _local | ||||||||
| C48 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C51tv_off | SDN | ||||||||
| C52tv_off | ArqA | ||||||||
| C55tv_off | com7tv_off | ||||||||
| C56tv_off | COM8tv_off |
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 30 Mar 11 and 13 Apr 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-4 | 1000kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-7.4dB) 180kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-7.7dB) 170kW | |
| com7 | (-13dB) 49.6kW | |
| com8 | (-13.1dB) 49.1kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D* | (-17dB) 20kW | |
| Analogue 5 | (-20dB) 10kW |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sandy Heath transmitter area
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Saturday, 23 December 2017
D
D Jones6:39 PM
Hi all, after reading this (from beginning to end) and testing various things (which I will not go through here for brevity), my summary of the digital switchover is that it has been a total disaster (whether it be on purpose of by "accident"). Signals rely too much on weather/no-one building between you and the transmitter/trees growing/someone thinking too much in between you and the transmitter. All of these things are blamed on the consumer and you MUST buy a new complete aerial system every 18 months as you will be blamed each and every time (although these things will not assist you in any way). Is it a} badly built aerials being sold to UK consumers? or b} a less than useless digital replacement to the analogue system that was in place (woow, you can now watch 100 useless channels for free showing US (as in USless) shows) or is it c} we are all really bad people and don't realise we are gnawing the cables during the night like rats? In summary, it does not seem to matter where you live when it comes to the SH transmitter, you now have a choice of the usual 4 channels most of the time and then you have to choose if you want to pay someone 100 a time when someone says the aerial has been moved by 1.3mm "due to the wind". So thankful we are away from analogue where it just worked... Maybe why we have lower unemployment now?
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M
MikeB11:03 PM
D Jones: I almost have no idea where to start....
'Signal's are pretty much the same power, from exactly the same transmitters, often received on the same aerials that people used for analogue.
'on weather/no-one building between you and the transmitter/trees growing/someone thinking too much in between you and the transmitter.' - None of these have changed one iota from analogue - if a tree/hill/mountain was in the way when you only had five channels, its exactly the same for digital.
Actually its better - we regularly used to get French TV during high pressure on the south coast when I was a kid - thanks to digital thats far less likely.
You certainly dont have to buy a new aerial - if it picks up a signal fine, then thats it - there is no such thing as a digital aerial. And if you do have to but a new aerial, the biggest reason probably isn't a long term change in certain frequencies, but simply that the old one has been battered by the weather to the point its about to fall apart. And a good rigger will put a new one up which does cope with any group change.
I've got over 70 channels right now, and thats all year - if you getting just 4 channels during the summer, then thats not digital, thats your system or position. And that would have been exactly the same as during analogue - but instead of the signal pixelating, it just would have gone snowy before just vanishing into static.
In short - what your saying doesn't add up.
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Friday, 29 December 2017
D
D. Meader4:49 PM
MikeB: F.Y.I., I traced this to a problem, a very weird problem if you ask me, with the Televes filter
from At800. Signal quality now [mostly] back up to V. Good [but I think Sandy Heath is toying with me!]
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M
MikeB10:59 PM
D. Meader: Glad its sorted, but Sandy Heath almost certainly isn't toying with you!
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Saturday, 30 December 2017
MikeP
7:27 PM
7:27 PM
D Meader:
A television transmitter is not able to do anything to anyones equipment, all it does is radiate the television signals to the service area. In the case of Sandy Heath it covers several tens of thousands of homes and provides the same signals to all of them, depending on the ability of the equipment in each home to receive the RF signals.
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Saturday, 27 January 2018
J
John10:39 AM
Having read the message on BBC Four HD that it had moved, I did a rescan and it is showing 106 and the same message to do a rescan, can someone tell me what is going on.
I am on Sandy Heath transmitter and have been for 14 years. My post code is PE16. with very good signal.
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S
StevensOnln111:25 AM
John: BBC Four HD has moved to the COM8 multiplex. Do you get BT Showcase HD on channel 115? Please provide a full postcode (the first half covers a wide area and won't allow us to access your coverage prediction).
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Wednesday, 7 February 2018
D
Dax12:03 PM
Hello since the retune have lost half the HD channels as well as sd ones on com 7 and 8 . We have previously recived these with no problems I am aware of moving frequency recently and presume the signal has weakened due to that . Postcode is NN48ND
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S
StevensOnln12:19 PM
Dax: There don't appear to have been any frequency changes at Sandy Heath yet (according to Digital UK the first frequency changes at Sandy Heath will take place on 6th June). Have you checked for any loose or damaged cables or connections behind your TV? COM7 & COM8 are broadcast at a much lower power level than the main muxes so any problems are likely to show up with weak signal on COM7/8 first.
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J
John5:59 PM
If anyone is using the Digitalstream PVR please note that these boxes have been affected by COM7 and COM8.
For further info go to AV FORUMS Digital Stream DHR-8203/5U HD-PVR Master thread - [Part Twelve] | Page 71 | AVForums
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