Full Freeview on the Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter
 | Google Streetview |  | Google map |  | Bing map |  | Google Earth |  | 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 25/11/2024 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.
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 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 | |||||
| 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-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 | ITVwaves | ||||||||
| C12 | BBCtvwaves | ||||||||
| C24 | _local | ||||||||
| C29 | SDN | ||||||||
| C31 | com7 | com7 | |||||||
| C32 | BBCA | ||||||||
| C34 | D3+4 | ||||||||
| C35 | BBCB | ||||||||
| C37 | com8 | com8 | |||||||
| C40 | LOCAL2 | ||||||||
| C48 | C5waves | C5waves | |||||||
| C49tv_off | ArqA | ArqA | |||||||
| C50tv_off | BBCA | BBCA | |||||||
| C54tv_off | -BBCB | -BBCB | -BBCB | ||||||
| C55tv_off | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | BBC1waves | ArqB | ArqB | ArqB | com7tv_off | ||
| C56tv_off | _local | _local | _local | LPR | |||||
| C57tv_off | GIM | GIM | GIM | GIM | |||||
| C58tv_off | SDN | SDN | SDN | ||||||
| C59tv_off | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | ITVwaves | D3+4 | D3+4 | D3+4 | |||
| C61 | ArqA | ||||||||
| C62 | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBC2waves | BBCA | |||||
| C65 | C4waves | C4waves | C4waves |
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 GranadaWhich companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Winter Hill transmitter area
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Monday, 30 July 2018
S
StevensOnln12:30 PM
Tony Morrissey: All of the channels you mentioned have been present for a few years, they certainly haven't been added recently. Loss/breakup of signal cannot be cause by having too many channels on the same multiplex. The most likely explanation is that there is some piece of electrical equipment (could be in your own home or a near neighbour) which is operating during the daytime and causing interference.
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C
Chris.SE11:44 PM
Tony Morrissey:
If you provide your postcode, we can see from Digital UK - Coverage checker what sort of signal you should be getting at your location.
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Wednesday, 1 August 2018
T
tony morrissey6:47 PM
Thanks for the info Chris that link was great website. I already new my coverage was good in Warrington. However looking at that link today 1/8/18 they have a retune event occurring for Winter Hill. I've wiped re-tuned many times over past month. I have made no retunes today - but those channels had same problem yesterday and started working later in the evening. However today "retune day" without me retuning - all is working @18:30 1/8/18 without issue. Maybe they've made adjustments? Or maybe it's just erratic symptom on my end. Either way if I think on I'll report back if it continues to consistently work without issue.
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T
tony morrissey6:53 PM
Ignore my last comment, there is no retune event....
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Monday, 6 August 2018
C
Chris.SE11:58 PM
tony morrissey:
Sometimes, after a set has been retuned several times, its memory map is a bit "disjointed". It's often best to do a factory reset/do a retune with the aerial unplugged to clear the memory of all channels and then do a new tune with the aerial plugged back in. However if you are now getting satisfactory reception on all muxes, I would leave well alone until/if further issues arise ;)
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Wednesday, 22 August 2018
J
js12:12 PM
Update - Errors in the current Freeview EIT:
There are 954 events containing invalid character codes in the EIT off BBCA.
There are 43 events containing invalid character codes in the EIT off BBCB.
There are 954 - 43 = 911 events containing grammatical errors the EIT off BBCB, caused by the omission of the intended character codes.
An example event:
Freesat - this is what the event should look like:
BBC Radio 1, Thu 23 Aug 04:00 - 06:33: Adele Roberts
Adele's got you, Early Morning Crew! Guess the lyric for a shout out in Whose Rhyme Is It Anyway?'
Here, Freesat is correctly using 0x2018 and 0x2019 for left and right single quotes respectively.
This site probably won't represent those characters, so here is what it should look like using just the ASCII apostrophe:
BBC Radio 1, Thu 23 Aug 04:00 - 06:33: Adele Roberts
Adele's got you, Early Morning Crew! Guess the lyric for a shout out in 'Whose Rhyme Is It Anyway?'
The Freesat EIT text is Huffman coded and the decoded output is in utf8, so, for example, the left single quote is 3 bytes [11100010 10000000 10011000] which translates to Unicode 2018.
See UTF-8 - Wikipedia
The invalid character codes on Freeview are the least significant bytes of the correct codes.
It's interesting that the missing top byte is always 0x20 - the code for a space. Are Freeview running something that strips extraneous spaces from the input data?
EIT off BBCA - invalid character codes 0x18, represented by {L'} and 0x19, represented by {R'}, for the left and right single quotes respectively:
700 BBC Radio 1, Thu 23 Aug 04:00 - 06:33: Adele Roberts
Adele{R'}s got you, Early Morning Crew! Guess the lyric for a shout out in {L'}Whose Rhyme Is It Anyway?{R'}
EIT off BBCB - missing apostrophe and quotes - therefore grammatical errors:
700 BBC Radio 1, Thu 23 Aug 04:00 - 06:33: Adele Roberts
Adeles got you, Early Morning Crew! Guess the lyric for a shout out in Whose Rhyme Is It Anyway?
An example from the 43 events common to BBCA and BBCB EITs, which contain invalid character codes:
094 PBS America, Sat 25 Aug 18:10 - 19:10: Plane Resurrection - Series 2
B25 Mitchell: The plane of choice for the {L'}Doolittle Raid{R'} needs a major winter overhaul to be ready for the air show season, but this little lady proves to be something of a diva. (S2 Ep5)
Note: All 43 events are on DVB-T2 multiplexes.
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Thursday, 23 August 2018
J
js7:47 AM
The example event above was replaced by this:
700 BBC Radio 1, Thu 23 Aug 04:00 - 06:33: Adele Roberts
Adele{R'}s got you with a Summer Mix, Early Morning Crew! She hits play on a Drake versus Kanye mix
No matter, nearly all Adele Roberts event descriptions start with "Adele{R'}s got you", so demonstrate a bad code.
Here's a new one - with a duff code in the title:
Freeview:
105 Channel 5 HD, Thu 30 Aug 04:00 - 04:45: Now That{R'}s Funny
Freesat:
105 Channel 5 HD, Thu 30 Aug 04:00 - 04:45: Now That's Funny
As always, Freesat get it right with code 2019 = single right quote, and Freeview get it wrong with code 19 = garbage.
Because Channel 5 HD is on a DVB-T2 multiplex, and all EIT text for services on DVB-T2 multiplexes is Huffman coded, this error is present regardless of which multiplex the EIT came from.
Another thing that needs reporting is the appearance of the FTA content management descriptor on DVB-T.
Most events on these radio channels have FTACMDs:
BBC 6 Music
BBC R1X
BBC Asian Net.
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 3
This set is also the set that have duff codes.
The FTACMD for those events has a value of F6 which according to ETSI EN 300 468 means:
Scrambling shall be applied where applicable for content protection.
Redistribution over the Internet is not allowed with the following exception: Redistribution over the Internet within a managed domain is enabled after a specified long (possibly indefinite) period of time.
The content revocation process shall be applied.
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Tuesday, 28 August 2018
C
Chris.SE12:10 AM
js: Have you been in touch with Arqiva as I previously suggsted? I'd be interested in their response.
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Saturday, 22 September 2018
O
Oliver Gunnell1:24 AM
Just wondered what peoples signal level of Com 7 was like compared to Com 8?, I am in a fringe area of Glossop, and currently cant get any signal on Com 7 at all but can get Com 8 fine, and according to this site Com 7 is meant to be higher power, strange.
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MikeP
11:08 AM
11:08 AM
Oliver Gunnell:
Please provide your full post code so that we can look at the expected coverage and likely reception at your precise location.
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