Full Freeview on the The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, England) transmitter
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The symbol shows the location of the The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, England) transmitter which serves 280,000 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 The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, England) mast?
The Wrekin transmitter - The Wrekin transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 16/09/2024 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)
The The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, 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 The Wrekin 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 The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, 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 The Wrekin transmitter?
BBC Midlands Today 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 1RF, 49km east-southeast (116°)
to BBC West Midlands region - 66 masts.
ITV Central News 2.9m homes 10.9%
from Birmingham B1 2JT, 49km east-southeast (116°)
to ITV Central (West) region - 65 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 80% evening news is shared with Central (East)
How will the The Wrekin (Telford and Wrekin, England) transmission frequencies change over time?
| 1984-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-2011 | 2011-13 | 27 Feb 2018 | |||||
| A K T | A K T | A K T | W T | K T | |||||
| C23 | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | ||||
| C26 | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBCA | BBCA | ||||
| C29 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves | ||||||
| C30 | -BBCB | BBCB | |||||||
| C33 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | ||||||
| C35 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C41 | +SDN | SDN | |||||||
| C44 | ArqA | ArqA | |||||||
| C47 | ArqB | ArqB | |||||||
| C48 | _local | _local | |||||||
| C51tv_off | _local |
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 Apr 11 and 20 Apr 11.
How do the old analogue and currrent digital signal levels compare?
| Analogue 1-5 | 100kW | |
| BBCA, D3+4, BBCB | (-7dB) 20kW | |
| SDN, ARQA, ARQB | (-10dB) 10kW | |
| Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B* | (-17dB) 2kW | |
| Mux C*, Mux D* | (-20dB) 1000W |
Local transmitter maps
The Wrekin Freeview The Wrekin DAB The Wrekin TV region BBC West Midlands Central (West micro region)Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the The Wrekin transmitter area
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Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?
Radiation patterns withheldWednesday, 6 April 2011
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Mike Dimmick1:40 PM
Reading
philip williams: The first stage of switchover at The Wrekin happened this morning. The low-power multiplex 1 was turned off, along with BBC Two analogue, and the high-power BBC A multiplex started up in their place.
BBC One analogue has temporarily been moved to BBC Two's old frequency, so you won't see anything if you select channel 1 on an analogue TV (or in a digital TV's analogue mode), and if you select 2, you'll get BBC One.
You won't see any new digital services yet. The HD services are the only new ones, and they don't start for another two weeks. You need Freeview HD-branded equipment to receive these channels.
You could also be using the Wrexham Rhos transmitter to your north-west, or Winter Hill to the north-east. The Wrekin is to your south-west. Wrexham Rhos and Winter Hill switched over, fully digital, over a year ago - late 2009.
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Mike's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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steve4:59 PM
Wrexham
Report from the screenface - Digital retuning seems to have gone OK, but the analogue TV in the kitchen now only has a b/w pic. Presumably signal weaker?
BBC's switchover people got to sort that one out!
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steve's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Thursday, 7 April 2011
THE WREKIN transmitter - Analogue BBC ONE Off Air; DSO related from 00:26 yesterday to 01:33 yesterday [BBC]
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THE WREKIN transmitter - Analogue BBC ONE Off Air; DSO related from 00:26 yesterday to 01:33 yesterday [BBC]
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steve7:51 PM
Wrexham
Hi Brian - Must admit to confusion now over muxes and strengths!
Are we now (7/4/11) getting 20k/2k/2k/2k/1k/1k? Unsurprisingly the 20k works with a bent nail and the rest don't?
What will we have from 20/4?
Is "Comparison of analogue and digital signal levels" now or later?
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steve's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Dusty8:24 PM
Wrexham
Didn't think there were any power increases due. Doesn't the juice go up substantially in September?
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Dusty's: mapD's Freeview map terrainD's terrain plot wavesD's frequency data D's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Mike Dimmick9:45 PM
Reading
Steve: Yes, that's correct.
On the 20th, D3&4 goes up to 20k and moves to C23. Mux B closes (services have already transferred to BBC A, except Sky Sports which go to ArqB on the 20th). The HD services, which replace it but on C30, start at 20k.
Mux A takes over Mux 2's frequencies of C31 and C49, staying at 2kW. Mux D becomes ArqB, takes over Mux C's channel and doubles to 2 kW, while Mux C becomes ArqA on Mux D's channel but stays on 1 kW. Some people may lose channels on Mux C because of this.
On 28 September, the commercial multiplexes go to the channels and power levels listed above, once Sutton Coldfield has finished with them.
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Mike's: mapM's Freeview map terrainM's terrain plot wavesM's frequency data M's Freeview Detailed Coverage
Friday, 8 April 2011
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steve12:45 AM
Wrexham
Mike - Thanks. That is clear. er. ish.
Bit like the soft mutation in Welsh. Or the Balkan Question.
A slightly simplistic question. Why does it make sense to broadcast some channels at 20kW and others at 2kW or 1kW?
Is it coz some is 64QAM and some only 16? Will my set-top ae find them equally receptionable?
I have tonight found that I get usable ITV if the loop Ae faces not quite the right direction!
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steve's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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steve12:49 AM
Wrexham
Phil Williams - where in Wrexham? Down here in Chirk - 10mls south and over the crest of a hill - we are firmly in Central TV and BBC Midlands (wherever the midlands are).
But Wrexham proper surely uses mainly Manchester/Grenada TV? I certaily would if I could.
I have even heard that there are TV signals in Welsh, but we know them not.
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steve's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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Mike Dimmick8:48 AM
steve: Last week Mux 1 was at 2 kW, on two different channels depending on whether you were west or east of the transmitter.
Each multiplex has had different levels over the years. The oldest capture archived by WaybackMachine.org is from February 2001, which shows kW on all multiplexes.
The levels were originally set very low because of fears of damage to analogue reception, particularly at the relays. As the damage was not as bad as had been believed, they increased the digital power, changed channels, changed radiation patterns, to improve coverage (some analogue relays were increased in power to compensate, I believe). Some sites like The Wrekin got additional aerials and channels where they couldn't find one set of channels to cover the whole area.
Still, digital has never had the power necessary to match the analogue coverage. The only way to get there is to convert fully - turn off analogue and all the clashes go away, so you can increase digital power up to equal or even greater coverage.
Doing it in two stages is a political choice, so as to give people fair warning that it's about to go and give them some extra time to get sorted out before everything disappears.
The analogue network was planned to provide four networks from the start, so reducing that to three PSB multiplexes is really not a problem. Generally the three PSBs get channels previously used for analogue - BBC A takes BBC One's old channel, D3&4 replaces ITV1. Here, BBC B has a different channel but this is due to releasing channels 31-38.
Fitting in the COM multiplexes is more tricky - six into four doesn't go. They have to go wherever space can be found and often at lower power, costing some coverage. The PSBs are required to meet analogue's 98.5% coverage. The COMs are expected to get 90.5%. They don't really care about that last 8% - they turned down the option to use any additional sites.
As for 16QAM 3/4 vs 64QAM 2/3: the plan was always to use 64QAM and all muxes used that mode from 1998 to 2002. The BBC originally ran a line-up on Mux 1 similar to what is now on BBC A. When ITV Digital went into administration, one of the conditions of the new licences was a mode change to improve coverage. However, the multiplexes granted by law rather than by auction (mux 1, 2 and A) were not compelled to make the change. The BBC did, ITV and S4C didn't, we had a mix of modes for the next six to ten years.
(S4C? Yes. SDN stood for S4C Digital Networks. They flogged it to ITV plc in 2005.)
2001 power levels:
DTT Channel Allocation - The Midlands
'Equalization programme' details from 2001:
DTG :: Page not found plans for increases in 2002 (not all of these happened):
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/s….doc
Post 2002 changes: DTT Transmitting Station alterations (RG47SH)
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