Full Freeview on the Hastings (East Sussex, England) transmitter
Brian Butterworth first published this on - UK Free TV
Google map | Bing map | Google Earth | 50.861,0.565 or 50°51'41"N 0°33'54"E | TN34 1LE |
The symbol shows the location of the Hastings (East Sussex, England) transmitter which serves 18,000 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.
_______
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 Hastings (East Sussex, 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 Hastings 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 Hastings (East Sussex, 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 Hastings transmitter?
BBC South East Today 0.8m homes 3.2%
from Tunbridge Wells TN1 1QQ, 37km northwest (323°)
to BBC South East region - 45 masts.
ITV Meridian News 0.7m homes 2.7%
from Maidstone ME14 5NZ, 47km north (357°)
to ITV Meridian (East) region - 36 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 50% evening news is shared with all of Meridian plus Oxford
How will the Hastings (East Sussex, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
1950s-80s | 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2012 | 2012-13 | 17 Jul 2018 | ||||
VHF | A K T | A K T | A K T | A K T | A K T | ||||
C4 | BBCtvwaves | ||||||||
C22 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBCB | BBCB | ||||
C23 | SDN | SDN | |||||||
C25 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
C26 | ArqA | ArqA | |||||||
C28 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
C30 | -ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
C32 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | ||||||
C35 | 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 30 May 12 and 13 Jun 12.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
Analogue 1-4, Analogue 5, SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | 1000W | |
Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D* | (-7dB) 200W | |
Mux 1* | (-10dB) 100W |
Local transmitter maps
Hastings Freeview Hastings DAB Hastings TV region BBC South East Meridian (East micro region)Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Hastings transmitter area
|
|
Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?
Radiation patterns withheldFriday, 29 June 2012
A
Adrian Durrant11:09 AM
Sorry... please delete that, and this post. In fact, all is well. The jewellery show is just playing on those channels until something better comes on, I panicked and thought they'd replaced those two channels. ooops!!
link to this comment |
Adrian Durrant: Unfortunately the UK now has a two-tier terrestrial transmitter network.
Those who can only receive from Eastbourne South Cliff Tower will only ever receive the Public Service (PSB) channels, as will around 8.5% of the population. This is because the 1,000 or so small relays like Eastbourne only carry those channels and of the 81 transmitters that do carry a full service, some viewers will only pick up the Public Service channels. The transmission power of the COM channels from Hastings is lower than that of the PSBs.
The general plan is that Public Service channels are receiveable after switchover without need to change aerial. Some people will require a different aerial to receive COM channels as well.
As part of switchover, UHF channels 31 to 37 were ringfenced to be sold off to three more Commercial operators, whose future networks will no doubt mirror those of the current quasi-national Commercial networks.
Had these channels not been set aside, then there would have been more available and hence clashes like which exists in the Eastbourne area with reception of the COM signals from Hastings transmitter would have been less likely.
link to this comment |
Adrian Durrant: Digital reception either works or it doesn't; there is very little in the middle, hence people talk about the "cliff-edge".
You may find that sometimes it works and at other times it doesn't, either because the interference from Eastbourne is a little stronger or because the signal isn't quite as good from Hastings or a bit of both.
If you are in an area with good reception of Heathfield, then that might be a better bet. If your Hastings aerial is a Group A one, then it won't really be suitable for Heathfield. However, as Hastings' pre-switchover digital signals were not all in Group A, I suspect that there is a fair chance that you have a wideband aerial, and this will be suitable for Heathfield, so long as it is sensitive on its Group B channels.
Failing that, you may be able to have the aerial mounted where it gets sufficient signal from Hastings, but where it is screened from Eastbourne, for example by mounting it on one side of the house and using the house to block the unwanted signal.
Obviously any changes should only be carried out by someone who is proficient at going up on to the roof in a safe manner.
link to this comment |
A
Adrian Durrant11:57 AM
Dave, many thanks, very interesting & great advice generally for anyone with problems of the nature discussed; I do apologise profusely, as I said above, I CAN actually receive all the channels. I can actually SEE both the Heathfield and Hastings channels from my roof and yet as I say, it turns out after all that I have no problems or at least am getting at least everything I did before, possibly since Eastbourne transmitter is behind my aerial and Heathfield is sideways-on and the wrong polarisation... as I said, I wrote to the local rag then saw the problems people were talking about here and paniicked that i'd got my facts wrong. But seems all is well, thanks again.
link to this comment |
A
Adrian Durrant11:59 AM
PS Regarding re-aligning, best in my case to leave well alone for the time being; my aerial is the Triax 100 which I reckon probably has too high gain to be pointed at Heathfield.
link to this comment |
Adrian Durrant: If you do decide to realign your aerial to Heathfield, then you could always add attenuation if the signal level received turns out to be too high.
In any case you will probably be able to split the signal to serve multiple rooms using an unpower splitter:
Television Aerial Boosters / Amplifiers, Splitters, Diplexers & Triplexers
link to this comment |
A
Adrian Durrant1:51 PM
Many thanks, I will see how things go, see if it turns out that re-aligning's the way to go. If that situation comes about it would indeed be a good idea to use a splitter; could then do away with my amplified splitter.
link to this comment |
Sunday, 1 July 2012
Malcolm Wood: If you're reading this, I've just read the article you provided a link to written by Bill Wright about phased arrays. Have you tried it out and are you in business?
link to this comment |
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
A
Adrian Durrant10:43 PM
Dave, the 'wattage' figure for the transmitters (at the right), is that what we used to call 'ERP' (Effective Radiated Power)?
link to this comment |
Adrian Durrant: Yes they are ERPs.
According to Digital UK predictor and Ofcom's "Digital Switchover Transmitter Details", all of Hastings' six multiplexes are at 1kW:
Ofcom | Digital Switchover Transmitter Details
However, the multiplex licences published by Ofcom, version 7 (27 January 2012) says that the PSBs are 1kW and the COMs are 0.5kW:
Ofcom | Supplementary licence documents in relation to DSO
I understand that the information at the top of this page is sourced from the licences document.
link to this comment |
Select more comments
Your comment please