Full Freeview on the BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) transmitter
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The symbol shows the location of the BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) transmitter which serves 17,000 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.
This transmitter has no current reported problems
The BBC and Digital UK report there are no faults or engineering work on the BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) transmitter._______
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 BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) 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 BlaenPlwyf 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 BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) 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 BlaenPlwyf transmitter?
BBC Wales Today 1.2m homes 4.7%
from Cardiff CF5 2YQ, 113km south-southeast (149°)
to BBC Wales region - 206 masts.
ITV Cymru Wales 1.2m homes 4.7%
from Cardiff CF5 6XJ, 115km south-southeast (151°)
to ITV Wales region - 206 masts.
How will the BlaenPlwyf (Ceredigion, Wales) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1950s-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2010 | 2010-13 | 31 Oct 2018 | ||||
| VHF | A K T | W T | W T | A K T | A K T | ||||
| C3 | BBCtvwaves | ||||||||
| C21 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | +BBCB | BBCB | ||||
| C22 | +ArqA | ArqA | |||||||
| C24 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C25 | SDN | SDN | |||||||
| C27 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C28 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C31 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ||||||
| C56tv_off | C5waves | C5waves |
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 10 Feb 10 and 10 Mar 10.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-4 | 100kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-4dB) 40kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-10dB) 10kW | |
| Analogue 5 | (-14dB) 4kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B* | (-17dB) 2kW | |
| Mux C*, Mux D* | (-20dB) 1000W |
Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Blaenplwyf transmitter area
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Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?
Radiation patterns withheldSaturday, 10 August 2013
P
pam wilkins7:20 PM
Port Talbot
Howell Edwards: i have a Humax box and seem to keep loosing signal,went off this afternoon ,still off now, the same happened last saturday and it did not come back until 21.00 sunday,i am sa13 postcode area is there any works being done affecting my signal.
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pam's: mapP's Freeview map terrainP's terrain plot wavesP's frequency data P's Freeview Detailed Coverage
P
pam wilkins7:21 PM
Port Talbot
p.s there is some work being done on pylons in the local area is this whats affecting me.
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pam's: mapP's Freeview map terrainP's terrain plot wavesP's frequency data P's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Monday, 19 August 2013
M
MikeB6:51 PM
Howell Edwards: I dont think your being fair to Freeview, and its certainly not fair to compare reception from a terrestial transmitter with Sky, for example.
Freeview has to deal with a mixture of geography and physics, and there are areas where neither ensures a good signal. The change in channels has also exposed possible downsides to current setups in terms of peoples aerials and systems, and in fact if you actually look through the questions, many will problems will be as a result of too good a signal!
Freeview is the de facto standard for the bulk of people (its in every TV), and most people already have an aerial, and of course its much more flexible than sat. systems in many ways. It is a pain to have to retune at the moment, but the vast majority of people a good signal the vast majority of the time. Put it this way - Waltham serves some 600,000 homes. If it works for 99% of them (which is a very high success rate), that is still 6000 homes with a problem.
Remember that the people who have a problem on this site are a subset of the viewing public as a whole, and a pretty small one at that. If you consider that many problems with reception have far more to do with inside the house than outside it, you can see that it is not far to blame Freeview for all problems.
Sky and other systems dont have a problem with geography, as long as the dish can 'see' the satellite - but even the Astra satellite is (I belive) not one but several - so even they require some backup.
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MikeP
8:54 PM
8:54 PM
Whilst largely agreeing with MikeB, there are some issues. Analogue terrestrial, as we had before 'Digital switchover' had been carefully planned for a 4 service channel allocation with the aim of covering over 97% of homes with 51 main transmitters and over 1000 'relay' transmitters, some of very low erp (effective radiated power output)- the smallest I know of being just 0.4W erp. DTV appears to many not to have been fully thought through and that seems to be the causal factor in so many retunes being required and it seems the 'average viewer' does not understand why. The main instigator seems, to me at least, to be Ofcom in not planning far enough ahead and allowing themselves to be, arguably, overly influenced by commercial considerations for services completely unconnected with television services, namely the needs of 4G operators.
There is also the issue of not understanding the vagaries of transmitting UHF signals - irrespective of the modulation methods nor the signal encoding systems. DTV is merely a UHF transmission using digital encoding with a form of quadrature modulation (often 64 QAM or higher) and is therefore subjected to the same transmission problems that UHF analogue TV had but with different unwanted side effects, no more ghosting but pixelation artifacts for example. That normal viewers are troubled so much with having to retune so often (far more than was needed with UHF analogue TV) should be of concern to those of us who have some knowledge and experience - but more especially to Ofcom! However, as you quite rightly say, we see here a minority of viewers and not all of the ones who have problems, so we see a small sub-set of the viewing public's experiences, so we need to be careful not to assume what is reported here is the norm.
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Tuesday, 20 August 2013
M
Michael11:36 PM
Howell Edwards: Ah so now we're at the crux of the matter - you are having trouble with your Freeview reception, and according to you, it MUST be something to do with the transmitter! I must ask, how were you able to "virtually quarantee (sic)" that the problem is with the transmitter?
Freeview more valued than most other "British institutions" | Freeview news | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
My grandparents have no problems at all with Freeview and like the fact that there's lots of new channels for them to watch. If people are having problems then generally as MikeB says, it's more likely to be at your end than the transmitter.
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Wednesday, 21 August 2013
J
Jan6:04 PM
Llandysul
Last night I had 22 digital stations from Blaenplwyf . Today I had none until noon and 9 afterwards. really its not good enough. All I had done is switched the tv off last night at 1am and on at 11am, at SA44 6NL.
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Jan's: mapJ's Freeview map terrainJ's terrain plot wavesJ's frequency data J's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Saturday, 24 August 2013
J
jb384:22 PM
Howell Edwards: Speaking in general terms, if someone posts a query regarding reception and they have entered their post code (or one from nearby) into the "site settings" box at the top right hand side of the screen, then this would have enabled anyone offering advice to check the status of the transmitters relevant to their location for faults etc before typing out a reply, the sites referred to being the constantly updated (reasonably anyway) R+T Investigation site as well as Digital UK's planned engineering work schedule, both accessible from the box to the right hand side of the posting.
The snag is that those sites are orientated to the reporting of problems (or potential same) on only the PSB muxes and not the three commercial channels, and who by not being connected in any way with the licence fee are not really obliged to report problems, and indeed they do not!
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M
mazbar5:27 PM
Howell Edwards: you are obviously having reception problems. When you called the aerial man to come around and check you aerial to make sure everything was ok with your installation what did he say ?
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M
mazbar5:49 PM
Howell Edwards : my name is anthony what does my name have to do with it. All I was asking is have you had your aerial checked befor you say the transmitter is faulty. If the transmitter was faulty everyone on the transmitter would be complaining wouldn't they ?
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M
mazbar6:14 PM
Howell Edwards: the reason you will find names like mine and jb and others is we do post allot and people don't need to know our names to act on our advice. In my experience transmitter faults account for about 1% of people's long term reception problems. The main reception problems are coax damaged, parts lose and rattling on the aerial, large objects between aerial and transmitter ie hills or large flats , if amplified the amplifier being faulty and lastly trees between the aerial and the transmitter. I spent a lot of money on a reception meter so I can check for any of the above. This is why I asked had you had your aerial checked
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