All posts by Chris.SE
Below are all of Chris.SE's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Adrian Smith:
Blimey, what a mishmash of reception in your locale. The only "region" with predicted excellent and good reception is Anglia, either from the Rouncefall or Sudbury transmitters. there are 6 transmitter in total you are predicted to be able to receive, none of the other 4 (Dover, Crystal Palace, Bluebell Hill and Gillingham Test Centre) are predicted to give good reception across all multiplexes.
You haven't said which way your aerial is pointing! For Rouncefall it should be bearing 303 degrees that's slightly W of WNW, for Sudbury it's bearing 6 degrees that fractionally E of due N.
But I would suggest if the have a CAI old class 2 aerial pointing at Rouncefall which is between 1km and 1 mile away, then unless you are using splitters to feed several rooms you could well be having signal overload as the transmitter is 4kW! I would have expected you to be able to pick it up on an indoor aerial provided you have a relatively unobstructed view WNW.
Check in your TV's tuning section which UHF channels you are actually tuned to and also check what the signal and quality (or error) figures are for each channel.
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Charles Stuart:
Well I'm glad you've got it resolved and thanks for the update, that's useful info.
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Rob:
The simple answer is Yes, and there could be, but it depends on the reason for your question.
The differences between TVs, & the differences between boxes will all be variable depending on Model/Type and Brand. They could all have different signal sensitivity, different picture and sound quality.
As a general rule one might expect a TV set to to do better if it's a T2/HD tuner but you could get better quality from a Box (using an HDMI connection) depending on the Brand and if it has a T2/HD tuner. It might also depend on whether the TV has any up-scaling capability.
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Adrian Smith:
Just FYI, of the other 4, Crystal Palace is London region obviously, the others are Meridian, with Dover seemingly predicted to give the most reliable signals overall, then Bluebell Hill/Gillingham Test Centre, lastly Crystal Palace.
The main issue with Crystal Palace is no predicted reception of the BBCB/HD mux and the COM6/ArqB mux but it does seem to depend on where in the locale you are as it might be all the COM muxes apart from COM4 and even then they are not good.
Aerial directions for these are as follows -
Dover - bearing 142 degrees, that's fractionally S of SE,
Bluebell Hill - bearing 198 degrees, almost SSW and nearby Gillingham Test Centre (Light Tx) 194 degrees,
Crystal Palace - bearing 247 degrees, that's pretty much WSW.
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Mike Davison:
Well it does seem to have had some real "Breaking news" on several occasions when I've looked.
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Woz:
The BBC site is correct. As mentioned in the last post (of mine) in response to Tony Life on the Crystal Palace transmitter page, unfortunately the site owner (Briantist:) has not had the time to do all the updates from the 700MHz Clearance program or correct some errors that appear around the site. It's been mentioned several times on the Crystal Palace pages and as mentioned in that above referred post, I've linked to my post on the previous page with the correct UHF listing. I have done similar on many (but not all) other transmitter pages with their UHF channels when the page list was not correct.
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Neal:
DAB is neither one or the other - it stands for Digital Audio Broadcasting, and the standard that most stations will eventually be using in the future will be DAB+, a different method of encoding the signal compared to plain DAB.
If you ever go to buy a new DAB Radio, ensure that it is DAB+ as there are many stations already DAB+ which you won't otherwise be able to get (there are too many large - mainly grocery - outlets still selling plain DAB to unwitting customers!).
There's only one transmitter serving your location for the 4 available muliplexes -
The Main BBC multiplex Block 12B: 225.648 MHz
The D1 National multiplex Block 11D: 222.064MHz
The SDL National multiplex Block 11A: 216.928 MHz
The Lincolnshire & Humberside Local Multiplex Block 12A: 223.936 MHz
Whether a station is in mono, stereo or joint stereo (a compressed stereo) depends on the station.
It sounds as though you may have a weak signal for some stations if the radio goes quiet for 5-10 seconds. Try repositioning its aerial and/or the radio. As you probably realise the transmitter is to the West of your locale, try and make sure you don't have major obstructions, large metal objects (fridges, freezers etc), thick walls and so on, between the radio and line of sight to the transmitter. Proximity to such things can also affect the signal.
If per chance you are using some form of external aerial, there could be a problem with it or the cable and/or its connections.
The best way to see which stations are on which multiplex (apart from the radio's display) is if I provide some links (in the same order as the multiplexes listed above) to a website, some of the information is a bit technical, but there's a list of stations and how they transmit.
DAB Ensembles WorldWide | UK National & Regional
DAB Ensembles WorldWide | UK National & Regional
DAB Ensembles WorldWide | UK National & Regional
DAB Ensembles WorldWide | UK Local & Small-Scale & Lincolnshire & Humberside | MuxCo.com - DAB Digital Radio Multiplexes
(scroll through each).
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Steve C:
Just a few more facts - There were 30 IIRC main transmitters broadcasting the two temporary multiplexes COMs 7&8. This went down to 25 during the 700MHz Clearance programme, this was because the equipment and antennae at the transmitters where they closed were not suitable for the move to the SFN UHF channels 55 & 56, nor would it have been commercially viable to upgrade the equipment for a temporary period.
COM8 was closed in June 2020 by Arqiva for commercial reasons - in the main due to the advertising climate during that stage of the pandemic. Some +1 channels closed and BBC Four HD and BBC News HD moved to COM7. Coverage of COM 7 is around 70% of the country (it never was a lot more, likewise COM8).
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Gtibb:
Thanks for the update. It's highly annoying that the BBC (who are normally quite good at reporting) have not mentioned this.
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Monday 28 June 2021 11:21PM
Paul Redmond:
Click on the link for this reply to find it.This website seems to be behaving oddly, some posts on DAB pages end up on odd pages that seem difficult to find. I recall you making this post on the 23rd or 24th and my reply is here DAB transmitter | free and easy immediately before yours (dated 28th June) on this page.