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Full Freeview on the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter

first published this on - UK Free TV
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The symbol shows the location of the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmitter which serves 440,000 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 Sudbury (Suffolk, England) mast?

Sudbury transmitter - Sudbury transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 18/11/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels Digital tick


Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name
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Which Freeview channels does the Sudbury 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.

MuxH/VFrequencyHeightModeWatts
PSB1
BBCA
 H max
C44 (658.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
1 BBC One (SD) East, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 16 others

PSB2
D3+4
 H max
C41 (634.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
3 ITV 1 (SD) (Anglia (East micro region)), 4 Channel 4 (SD) South ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 South ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (Anglia east), 71 That’s 60s,

PSB3
BBCB
 H max
C47 (682.0MHz)229mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD East, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Meridian Southampton), 104 Channel 4 HD South ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 107 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others

COM4
SDN
 H max
C29 (538.0MHz)186mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
20 U&Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 GREAT! action, 57 U&Dave ja vu, 58 ITV3 +1, 59 ITV4 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 TRUE CRIME, 68 TRUE CRIME XTRA, 81 Blaze +1, 83 Together TV, 91 WildEarth, 93 ITVBe +1, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 251 Al Jazeera English, 255 FRANCE 24 (in English), 265 Rok Sky +1, plus 29 others

COM5
ArqA
 H max
C31- (553.8MHz)228mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
11 Sky Mix, 17 Really, 19 U&Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 Sky Arts, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 U&Drama +1, 65 That's TV 2, 70 Quest +1, 74 &UYesterday +1, 76 That's TV 2 MCR, 233 Sky News, plus 13 others

COM6
ArqB
 H max
C37 (602.0MHz)228mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
12 Quest, 25 U&W, 27 U&Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! christmas, 56 That's TV (UK), 63 GREAT! romance mix, 73 HobbyMaker, 75 That's 90s, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 84 PBS America, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 18 others

DTG-8 64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)

The Sudbury (Suffolk, 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 Sudbury transmitter?

regional news image
BBC Look East (East) 0.8m homes 3.2%
from Norwich NR2 1BH, 77km north-northeast (24°)
to BBC East region - 27 masts.
70% of BBC East (East) and BBC East (West) is shared output
regional news image
ITV Anglia News 0.8m homes 3.2%
from NORWICH NR1 3JG, 78km north-northeast (24°)
to ITV Anglia (East) region - 26 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Anglia (West)

Are there any self-help relays?

Felixstowe WestTransposer1000 homes +1000 or more homes due to expansion of affected area?
WithamTransposer14 km NE Chelmsford.118 homes

How will the Sudbury (Suffolk, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

1984-971997-981998-20112011-131 Aug 2018
B E TB E TB E TE TK T
C29SDN
C31ArqA
C35C5wavesC5waves
C37ArqB
C41ITVwavesITVwavesITVwavesD3+4D3+4
C44BBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBCABBCA
C47C4wavesC4wavesC4wavesBBCBBBCB
C51tv_offBBC1wavesBBC1wavesBBC1waves
C56tv_offArqB
C58tv_offSDN
C60tv_off-ArqA

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 6 Jul 11 and 20 Jul 11.

How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?

Analogue 1-4 250kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB(-4dB) 100kW
Analogue 5(-7dB) 50kW
Mux 2*(-14.9dB) 8.1kW
Mux B*(-15.2dB) 7.5kW
Mux 1*(-15.5dB) 7kW
Mux A*(-17dB) 5kW
Mux C*(-22.2dB) 1.5kW
Mux D*(-23.6dB) 1.1kW

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Sudbury transmitter area

Oct 1959-Feb 2004Anglia Television
Feb 2004-Dec 2014ITV plc
Feb 1983-Dec 1992TV-am•
Jan 1993-Sep 2010GMTV•
Sep 2010-Dec 2014ITV Daybreak•
• Breakfast ◊ Weekends ♦ Friday night and weekends † Weekdays only. Sudbury was not an original Channel 3 VHF 405-line mast: the historical information shown is the details of the company responsible for the transmitter when it began transmitting Channel 3.

Comments
Friday, 6 September 2013
N
nick
sentiment_satisfiedGold

3:12 PM

JB, please would you tell me why there is no buzz on larger tvs?
Is this 'overloading' also the reason that some of the small tvs have a problem with the picture, ie that if you imagine a square in the centre of the screen, approx a quarter the size of the screen, the two vertical sides of the box bulge in the middle?

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nick's 431 posts GB flag
Briantist
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

4:00 PM

nick: Cathode Ray tubes used an electro magnet to move a beam around inside a glass tube. This could result in an audible buzz.

LCD technology is provided by "solid state" digitally addressable pixels - no magnet, no buzz.

Compare Liquid-crystal display - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia with Cathode ray tube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .



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Briantist's 38,915 posts GB flag
N
nick
sentiment_satisfiedGold

4:17 PM

thanks Brian, I am talking about set top boxes with portable crt tvs via scart at present, did not get a 'cushion' effect on the same tv on analogue.

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nick's 431 posts GB flag
Briantist
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

4:25 PM

nick: For many years all old the analogue broadcasts were broadcast in a 14:9 letterbox.

It could be that having black bars, as well as the picture blurring of modulation and demodulation reduced the effect compared to having full-screen full-width, high level signals provided by SCART.

I would say "get a modulator", but you'd be wasting you money. You can get a full-HD Freeview TV for less than £100 - 19" Furrion TV | Ebuyer.com ?



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Briantist's 38,915 posts GB flag
J
jb38
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

9:08 PM

nick: With regards to your posting of 3rd @ 06.09pm, even although you personally may not have come across it, but the problem you refer to "can" also be experienced on some large screen "analogue" TV's connected to an external receiver via a scart lead and with the reasons for on both large and small being twofold as follows, although the latter reason mentioned is not so commonly experienced on larger screen TV's basically because that they are usually fitted with more substantial power supplies.

The first reason can be caused by the level of the video signal being fed into the TV's signal processing circuitry via the scart lead being a little on the high side, and which dependant on severity of can in some instances cause it to break through into the TV's audio circuitry resulting in video signal buzz being heard through the speaker, the frequency / intensity of changing in sympathy with the content of the picture, this type of problem having the potential to affect large and small sets alike, although reducing the video signal input level generally cures the problem.

However the other and more common reason is a little more complex, and to put it in a simplified way is basically caused by the TV having a poorly designed power supply by not having adequate filtering between the supplies used to power the various stages such as the receiver / frame timebase / line output stages/ and of course the audio IC, however the problem is mainly concerned with the section that makes the most demand on the power supply, namely the line output stages.

The problem being that bright high contrast images containing plenty of white content makes the maximum demand on the power supply line used by the line output transformer's driver transistor, the demand as touched on before varying in sympathy with the content of the picture, but though because its linked to the content / make up of the picture complex signals are involved and so there is always a high level of ripple currents circulating in the DC power line feeding this section, likewise increasing the contrast to give a somewhat more vibrant picture increases the difference between high and low in these currents thereby increasing the ripple content and which can find its way into the audio circuitry on a set with a less than ideal level of filtering.


People who use Sky boxes coupled into their older CRT analogue TV's via a scart lead sometimes experienced this type of problem if they had set their Sky boxes picture control setting to "high contrast" rather than medium, but likewise noticed that some of their other TV's connected via the sky boxes RF modulator did not show this problem, basically because that unlike in the case of a scart input and where the TV's signal processing circuitry is at the mercy of the signal level fed into it via its scart socket, anything received via an RF input passes though a series of processes that irons out excesses

Please note though that this has been put in a greatly simplified fashion.

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jb38's 7,179 posts GB flag
Saturday, 7 September 2013
N
nick
sentiment_satisfiedGold

7:50 AM

Thanks JB and Brian, very good of you to give me such full answers. Seems ultimately I will have to discard all my old portables, but even with one of those flat things where you have to dance around the room to see the picture right I would still have to connect a box, Sky or Freesat, thanks to all the problems I have re consistent reception of Freeview, where even the 'light' transmitter at Aldeburgh occasionally gets knocked out with suspicion falling on Dutchmen.

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nick's 431 posts GB flag
J
jb38
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

9:40 AM

nick: Pleased to have been of assistance, although I did mean to enquire if your TV is using an RGB or composite video connection via the scart lead? because should it be the latter and you are still one for carrying out experiments? then you could have doctored the scart connector plugged into the box to incorporate a potentiometer across pins 17 and 19 (17 ground / 19 comp video out) the wire on 19 being removed and connected onto the middle connection of the variable resistor (about 1K) as this would enable you to adjust the video level from the box to suit the TV its connected into.

The only downside of this being, that if the CRT on your portable has lost some of its emission resulting in a lack lustre picture, then reducing the video input level although curing your audio problem will have the opposite effect on the picture.

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jb38's 7,179 posts GB flag
M
MikeB
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

7:55 PM

nick: You dont 'even with one of those flat things where you have to dance around the room to see the picture right' - I regularly get asked this by customers, and I ask them to see for themselves, you can see from a 170 angle (not that you'd want to).

You can use whatever box you like to watch/record either on Freesat or Freeview (your probably going to need one anyway), but why not use the Sudbury (Full) transmitter, rather than Alderburgh?


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MikeB's 2,579 posts GB flag
N
nick
sentiment_satisfiedGold

11:41 PM

Thanks JB.
I do not connect the third leg of the pot to anything?
All my portables have plenty of contrast, they don't seem to go pale like big ones.
I do not think I have the facility to select RGB/composite. I know with Sky there is that facility but not sure if the same with small freeview box.

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nick's 431 posts GB flag
N
nick
sentiment_satisfiedGold

11:49 PM

Mike, thanks. I had one of those flat things once, I returned it to the shop. Whilst you could see the picture over a wide angle, unless you sat directly in front of it the picture was pale, and if you adjusted the thing to compensate for sitting at the side, it was no good for people sitting in front. But what irked me too was the way it showed the colour white. It was like looking at a fluorescent tube. You could tone it down, but never get any hue into it, ie make it a bit yellower.
Please see my previous numerous posts re Sudbury. It is ok in winter, this time of year signal on most muxes goes from 95% to zero in seconds. I had hoped when we went digital they would have overcome the problem of interference from Holland. No such luck.

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nick's 431 posts GB flag
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