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

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

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?

Comments

Wednesday, 27 November 2019

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

11:42 AM

Gary Malliber:

The site owner has been unable to keep up with all the clearance changes and as has been said many times on this and other boards, the best place to look is the official listings on the site (now that the digitalUK site has been merged into it).

Goto Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free and scroll to the box "Check Freeview at my home", put in the postcode and house number/name and click "Check".

On the new page, amongst other things, you should see a mention of any Planned work Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/planned--works
also whether there's any current transmitter issues - I've not always found the latter to be 100% reliable.

On this new page, scroll down just over half way and click "Detailed view".
You'll now see a list of any transmitters and their multiplexes that are predicted to be received at your location. You can hover over some of the information to get more detail/explanation, eg. hover over a channel number will give the transmission and the in kW.

For which are on which see Channel listings | Freeview
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free service- is a page worth keeping an eye on.

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Chris.SE's 4,358 posts GB flag

Thursday, 5 December 2019

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

1:47 AM

UK (or is it just now) have some ZERO WIDTH SPACES on offer this week, courtesy of BBC 6 Music!

A short-form error summary follows:

Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off North BBC A. Date: 2019/12/05 00:59:54

It has become apparent through observation that invalid bytes in the Freeview EIT text strings are the low-order bytes of the Unicode General Punctuation Block:

Of course only bytes less than 0x20 qualify as invalid codes in the context of EIT text strings.

Since about April 2018, the following invalid codes have been found in the Freeview EIT text items:

0x01, substitute: {0x01} -> Unicode Character: "EM QUAD" (U + 2001)
0x08, substitute: { } -> Unicode Character: "PUNCTUATION SPACE" (U + 2008)
0x0B, substitute: {} -> Unicode Character: "ZERO WIDTH SPACE" (U + 200B)
0x10, substitute: {-} -> Unicode Character: "HYPHEN" (U + 2010)
0x13, substitute: {--} -> Unicode Character: "EN DASH" (U + 2013)
0x14, substitute: {---} -> Unicode Character: "EM DASH" (U + 2014)
0x18, substitute: {L'} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2018)
0x19, substitute: {R'} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2019)
0x1C, substitute: {L''} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201C)
0x1D, substitute: {R''} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201D)

There are 976 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x08, 24, 2.46%
0x0B, 2, 0.20%
0x13, 4, 0.41%
0x18, 13, 1.33%
0x19, 887, 90.88%
0x1C, 23, 2.36%
0x1D, 23, 2.36%

There are 777 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.

The Culprits:
Format:
service_name, number of events containing errors

BBC 6 Music, 1
BBC Radio 4 Ex, 4
Blaze+1, 1
TCC, 1
ADULT Studio 66, 32
Planet Knowledge, 36
Sports Channel Network, 7
Sony Movies Action, 2
Ketchup TV, 47
RNIB Connect, 5
Sony Movies, 26
POP, 100
Al Jazeera Eng, 4
PBS America, 4
Sony Channel +1, 27
POP Max, 122
Sony Movies Christmas +1, 2
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
PBS America +1, 8

Events with invalid codes in the eight-day EIT off multiplex BBC A at 2019/12/05 00:59:54:

#1: BBC 6 Music, Fri 06 Dec 21:00 - 00:00: title = "Tom Ravenscroft", description = "Tom chats to Ghanaian artist Bryte, and Ahadadream and SNW provide a guest mix. He released his debut album {}{L''}Too Good For You Liking{R''}{} last year, and has relocated to the UK.", description error bytes: 0x0B, 0x1C, 0x1D, 0x0B

#2: BBC Radio 4 Ex, Thu 05 Dec 06:30 - 07:00: title = "I Have a Dream - Dr Martin...", description = "...Luther King. 4 Extra Debut. Global figures celebrate the legacy Dr Martin Luther King by reading the words of his {L''}I Have a Dream{R''} speech. From 2013.", description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D

...

#777: PBS America +1, Thu 12 Dec 20:35 - 21:40: title = "Gold: The Story of Man's...", description = "...6,000 Year Obsession: Grant Williams looks at gold{R'}s role throughout history: how it became money and its path through the rise and fall of empires and civilisations. (Part 1 of 2)", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x19

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js's 841 posts NL flag

Friday, 10 January 2020

PG
9:13 PM

When the retune takes place, both and will be transmitting on . Although they are on different polarities, I think that some will be experienced if you are in the wrong location, e.g.Marple.

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PG's 5 posts GB flag

Sunday, 12 January 2020

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

2:47 AM

PG:

As you probably know, there are 2 retune events at , one on the 20th Feb., the multiplexes moving then are PSB1/BBCA and COM8. But also note that PSB1/BBCA will start broadcasting on its new UHF on the 19th Feb., the day before. The simulcast of the old channel UHF will continue until the final retune on 22nd April, this will give time for those that need an change, to get that done before the final retune.

On 22nd April PSB2 &3 and COMs4&5 & the GI mux move. COM4/SDN moves to UHF29 as you've mentioned. BUT at the PSB3/BBCB HD mux is also supposedly moving from to , so there should not be any clash. For some reason that Ladder Hill change isn't listed in Clearance documents, but it is on the Predicted pages and the associated page!

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Chris.SE's 4,358 posts GB flag

Monday, 13 January 2020

PG
2:34 AM

Chris.SE:

Many thanks for clarifying that.

In the absence of the on this site being kept up to date, it would be much appreciated if you were able to shed any light on what the full channel line up will be for after the final retune on 22 April. In particular, do you know where ArqA and ArqB are moving to? In the heading "23 Oct 2019", ArqA is still showing as being on , which is denoted as "Being removed from (for use)", and ArqB has disappeared entirely.

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PG's 5 posts GB flag

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

3:49 AM

PG:

No problem, the final after the Retune event 22 Apr 2020 are -
For PSBs1-3 & COMs 4-8, UHF Channels 32, 34, 35, 29, 31, 37, 55, 56
& for Local muxes G-MAN, L-LIV, L-MAN, L-PTN, UHF Channels 27, 21, 24, 40.
Note for all: of all multiplexes is dependant on location, but especially COMs 7&8 and the Local Multiplexes the latter being beamed in the relevant directions Manchester, Liverpool, Manchester & .
Some may find this page useful - Freeview Detailed Coverage Checker | Freeview

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Chris.SE's 4,358 posts GB flag

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

David Roberts

_{sentiment_satisfied}Bronze

2:57 PM

Can i seek clarification for the benefit of 's North viewers who are not getting any info an the Two Re-Tune events,Dated 20/02/2020 and 22nd April 2020. Even us in the TV Trade are getting No upto Date info. Having tackled .co.uk,they don't seem able to give me any re-assurances that both the TV Trade and viewers will receive the relevant info,concerning Winter Hill.

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David Roberts's 23 posts GB flag

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

4:18 PM

David Roberts:

Eh, are you kidding me ??? I've seen and heard bad reports about being useless with what they say periodically, but this bad! How did you contact them by phone or twitter? Please reply to that as I'm pursuing a number of issues with them and this will be added to the list!

OK, most info can be found on what I saw someone else describe as their "'Chad Valley' style Freeview website" ! when of course you discover where to look.
Here - Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/-clearance">What is 700MHz clearance? | Freeview
Click on the link '2020 clearance events(Q1-Q2)'
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/700mhz-clearance">What is 700MHz clearance? | Freeview /clearance-events-2020
There's a miriad of documents you can see listed there, the Granada one will have details BUT
there are errors in that list, some as mentioned in previous posts above.

Some other pages of some (limited) use -
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/planned--works">Planned engineering works | Freeview
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free service-">Service updates | Freeview
Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free corporate/platform-management/-listings">Channel listings | Freeview

You can also find other information from using the "Check Freeview at my home" on the home page Freeview | All your favourite TV shows, all in one place and all for free and also the page. Put in a suitable postcode, house names/numbers can sometime be important where roads are hilly, on the new page scroll down to click on "Detailed view"
At the top of that page, there's a 'View ' option which can be useful as it carries historical information as well, but again, there can be errors from time to time.

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Chris.SE's 4,358 posts GB flag

Friday, 31 January 2020

Chris Gunn
12:46 AM

I receive from the . On early mornings (just after 00:00) of 29, 30 January, both Com7 and Com8 appear to have been off air. This morning, 31 January, just Com8 appears to be off air. I have searched both BBC and Freeview websites and both show no problems and no work taking place.
Is there engineering work going on and how long is it expected to last?

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Chris Gunn's 2 posts GB flag

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

2:08 AM

Chris Gunn:

As per one of the links listed in the post immediately before yours, you will find being listed for Planned with "Possible service interruptions", no doubt in preparations for the retune event on the 20th Feb.2020 when PSB1 will officially move to UHF and COM8 moves to .

Note - because the group for Winter Hill was a Group C/D, after the retunes (20th Feb & 22nd April) a Group T/ will be needed by some to receive all multiplexes especially PSB1 after the 20th Feb.

PSB1 will actually start simulcasting on UHF C32 on the 19th Feb. Those that are able to do a manual retune for C32 will be able to find out if they can receive PSB1 on C32. If not, the simulcast means that PSB1 will continue to transmit on until the final retune on 22nd April, however automatic retunes will find the simulcasted PSB1 will be located in the programme LCN751 channel range.

For those who cannot receive PSB1 on C32, and do not have or you can get free with a new aerial by contacting Freeview on 0808-100-0288, you should do this as soon as possible from the 20th Feb.
IF you make your own arrangements to replace your aerial, you will NOT get help from Freeview.

You will find further comment about the retunes etc. in previous posts to this (Sun.12th Jan. et seq).

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Chris.SE's 4,358 posts GB flag

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