Full Freeview on the Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter

Brian Butterworth first published this on 1st May 2004 at 08:20 - UK Free TV

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53.625,-2.516 or 53°37'30"N 2°30'56"W

BL6 6SL

The symbol shows the location of the Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter which serves 2,690,000 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 Winter Hill (Bolton, England) mast?

Winter Hill transmitter - Winter Hill transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 11/11/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels

Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name

_______

Which Freeview channels does the Winter Hill 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.

Mux	H/V	Frequency	Height	Mode	Watts
PSB1 BBCA	H max	C32 (562.0MHz)	726m	DTG-	100,000W
	1 BBC One (SD) North West, 2 BBC Two England, 9 BBC Four, 23 BBC Three, 201 CBBC, 202 CBeebies, 231 BBC News, 232 BBC Parliament, plus 17 others
PSB2 D3+4	H max	C34 (578.0MHz)	726m	DTG-	100,000W
	3 ITV 1 (SD) (Granada), 4 Channel 4 (SD) North ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 North ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (Granada), 71 That’s 60s,
PSB3 BBCB	H max	C35- (585.8MHz)	726m	DTG-	100,000W
	46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD North West, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Granada), 104 Channel 4 HD North ads, 105 Channel 5 HD, 106 BBC Four HD, 107 BBC Three HD, 204 CBBC HD, 205 CBeebies HD, plus 1 others 66 TBN UK,
COM4 SDN	H max	C29 (538.0MHz)	726m	DTG-8	100,000W
	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 (554.0MHz)	726m	DTG-8	100,000W
	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)	726m	DTG-8	100,000W
	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
LM	H -20dB	C40 (626.0MHz)	572m	DTG-12	1,000W
	from 1st October 2014: 7 That's Manchester,
LL	H -17dB	C24 (498.0MHz)	572m	DTG-12	2,000W
	from 30th June 2014: 7 Bay TV Liverpool,
LPR	H -20dB	C56 (754.0MHz)	572m	DTG-12	1,000W
	from 1st October 2014: 7 That's Lancashire,
GIM	H -20dB	C57 (762.0MHz)	572m	DTG-2	1,000W
	Now 90s, Spotlight TV, Clubland TV, Country Music Entertainment , Classic Hits MCR, 77 That's 60s MCR, 78 TCC, 80 That's 80s, 86 That's 90s MCR, 88 TV Warehouse+1,

DTG-8 64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
DTG-12 QSPK 8K 3/4 8.0Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
DTG-2 16QAM 2K 3/4 18.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
H/V: aerial position (horizontal or vertical)

Which BBC and ITV regional news can I watch from the Winter Hill transmitter?

BBC North West Tonight 3.1m homes 11.8%
from Salford M50 2QH, 22km southeast (140°)
to BBC North West region - 92 masts.

ITV Granada Reports 3.1m homes 11.6%
from Salford M50 2EQ, 22km southeast (139°)
to ITV Granada region - 80 masts.

How will the Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

	1956-80s	1984-97	1997-98	1998-2009	2009-13	2013-18	2013-17	20 Feb 2020
	VHF	C/D E	C/D E	C/D E	C/D E	C/D E T	W T	W T
C9	ITV_waves
C12	BBCtv_waves
C24								_local
C29								SDN
C31							com7	com7
C32								BBCA
C34								D3+4
C35								BBCB
C37							com8	com8
C40								LOCAL2
C48			C5_waves	C5_waves
C49_{tv_off}						ArqA	ArqA
C50_{tv_off}						BBCA	BBCA
C54_{tv_off}					-BBCB	-BBCB	-BBCB
C55_{tv_off}		BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves	BBC1_waves	ArqB	ArqB	ArqB	com7_{tv_off}
C56_{tv_off}					_local	_local	_local	LPR
C57_{tv_off}					GIM	GIM	GIM	GIM
C58_{tv_off}					SDN	SDN	SDN
C59_{tv_off}		ITV_waves	ITV_waves	ITV_waves	D3+4	D3+4	D3+4
C61					ArqA
C62		BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	BBC2_waves	BBCA
C65		C4_waves	C4_waves	C4_waves

_{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 4 Nov 09 and 2 Dec 09.

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

Analogue 1-4	500kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB	(-7dB) 100kW
com7	(-12.9dB) 25.7kW
com8	(-13.4dB) 22.6kW
Analogue 5	(-16dB) 12.5kW
Mux 1, Mux 2, Mux A, Mux B, Mux C, Mux D	(-17dB) 10kW
LL	(-24dB) 2kW
GIM, LM, LPR	(-27dB) 1000W

Local transmitter maps

Winter Hill Freeview Winter Hill DAB Winter Hill AM/FM Winter Hill TV region BBC North West Granada

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Winter Hill transmitter area

May 1956-Jul 1968	Granada Television†
May 1956-Jul 1968	Associated British Corporation◊
Jul 1968-Feb 2004	Granada Television
Feb 2004-Dec 2014	ITV plc

Feb 1983-Dec 1992	TV-am•
Jan 1993-Sep 2010	GMTV•
Sep 2010-Dec 2014	ITV Daybreak•

• Breakfast ◊ Weekends ♦ Friday night and weekends † Weekdays only.

Is the transmitter output the same in all directions?

J

js

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

4:00 AM

I'm seeing some unusual character codes in the freeview EPG; specifically, an apostrophe ' with code 0x19 and a dash or minus sign - with code 0x13.

I don't have a device so can anyone tell me if the characters inside the curly brackets in the following event descriptions are rendered properly?

FreeSports, Mon 07 May 22:30 - 00:30: La Liga 2
v Rayo Vallecano: Coverage from the latest round of {'}s Segunda Division as teams battle it out to earn a promotion to the much coveted La Liga.

PBS America, Sun 06 May 21:10 - 23:35: The Vietnam War
Resolve (January 1966-June 1967): As an antiwar movement builds back home, soldiers and Marines discover that the war in Vietnam is nothing like their fathers{'} war. (Part 4 of 10)

Al Jazeera Eng HD, Wed 02 May 07:00 - 08:00: The Coming War On China
Journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn't {-} that the world's greatest military , the U.S. may well be on the road to war with China.

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js's 841 posts GB flag

MikeP

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

1:03 PM

JS:

The curly brackets are extraneous, read it as if they are not present and it makes perfect UK English grammatical sense. Why they are showing I don't know.

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MikeP's 3,056 posts PT flag

R

Robert Lee

_{sentiment_satisfied}Bronze

6:20 PM

UHF 55 has disappeard and with it BBC News HD and a few others. Everything else is OK. Any ideas as no fault flagged.

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Robert Lee's 87 posts GB flag

M

Michael
7:39 PM

Between this morning and this afternoon BBC News HD and Aljazeera HD have both vanished ( on 107 or 1108). No changes are indicated here, so what has happened?

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Michael's 1 post GB flag

R

Robert Lee

_{sentiment_satisfied}Bronze

7:46 PM

The missing programmes have just reappeared on UHF 32 which now carries programmes previously on 55. Nice of them to let us know.

Brianist - can we please have !

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R

Robert Lee

_{sentiment_satisfied}Bronze

9:20 PM

Just realised that I'm probably getting a weak from .
So, what has happened to UHF 55 on ?

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Robert Lee's 87 posts GB flag

C

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

1:37 AM

There is some work at this week which might mean a weak from time to time and temporary loss of (es).
For those that have lost some muliplexes altogether, there was a retune event on March 7th which would have been advertised.
Go to Digital UK - Coverage checker and put in your postcode and tick "Detailed view". This will show you predicted and the current UHF for each multiplex.

Robert : BBC News HD is still on the COM7 mux and is still on UHF55.

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Chris.SE's 4,359 posts GB flag

J

js

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

2:51 AM

MikeP: The Al Jazeera HD event is on now so I've grabbed the EITpf off , and :

Freesat_pf:

Al Jazeera Eng, Tue 01 May 2018 02:00 - Tue 01 May 2018 03:00: The Coming War On China
Journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn't _ that the world's greatest military , the U.S. may well be on the road to war with China.

ASTRA_pf:

Al Jazeera HD, Tue 01 May 02:00 - 03:00: The Coming War On China
Ep.2 Journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn't - that the world's greatest military power, the U.S. may well be on the road to war with China.

North West_BBC A_pf:

Al Jazeera Eng HD, Tue 01 May 02:00 - 03:00: The Coming War On China
Journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn't that the world's greatest military power, the U.S. may well be on the road to war with China.

We see an underscore character on Freesat; a dash or minus sign on ASTRA; and garbage on Freeview.

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js's 841 posts GB flag

J

js

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

5:19 AM

MikeP: All EIT title and description strings, for on the DVB-T2 multiplexes, are Huffman coded.

I've had to modify my decoder to deal with these errant characters as follows.

Here, lastchar is the currently decoded byte and decode is the decoded string so far:

Select Case lastchar

Case &HA, &HD, &H20 To &H7E

decode = decode + Chr(lastchar)

Case &H19

decode = decode + "{'}"

Case &H13

decode = decode + "{-}"

Case Else

decode = decode + "{hex=" + Hex(lastchar) + "}"

End Select

I'm using the curly brackets to identify and locate the fixes in the .

The output is an xmltv file.

If I try to open the uncorrected xmltv file in my xmltv viewer application, it responds with an error message giving the line number and position in the line of the error and refuses to proceed further.

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js's 841 posts GB flag

R

Robert Lee

_{sentiment_satisfied}Bronze

9:13 AM

Just done a full autoscan of Panasonic TV and Humax and has reappeared! Which begs the question why did it disappear yesterday, and why didn't a manual of C55 work?

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Robert Lee's 87 posts GB flag

Page 155

Please post a question, answer or commentIf you have Freeview reception problems before posting a question your must first do this Freeview reset procedure then see: Freeview reception has changed, Single frequency interference, and Freeview intermittent interference.

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