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 02/10/2023 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), | |||||
| 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 Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 Great! Movies Action, 57 Dave ja vu, 58 ITVBe +1, 59 ITV3 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 CBS Reality, 68 RealityXtra, 78 TCC, 81 Blaze +1, 89 ITV4 +1, 91 WildEarth, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 267 Al Jazeera English, plus 35 others | |||||
| COM5 ArqA | H max | C31 (554.0MHz) | 726m | DTG-8 | 100,000W |
 Smithsonian Channel, 11 Sky Arts, 17 Really, 19 Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 pick, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 Drama +1, 65 That's 60s, 70 Quest +1, 74 Yesterday +1, 75 That's 80s, 233 Sky News, plus 11 others | |||||
| COM6 ArqB | H max | C37 (602.0MHz) | 726m | DTG-8 | 100,000W |
 Quest Red +1, Classic Hits, 12 Quest, 25 W, 27 Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 Great! Movies Christmas, 56 That's TV (UK), 61 GREAT! movies +1, 63 Great! Movies Christmas 1, 71 That’s 60s, 73 HobbyMaker, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 83 Together TV, 84 PBS America, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 20 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, 76 That's 60s MCR, 77 That's 70s MCR, 80 That's 80s MCR, 86 That's 90s, 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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Wednesday, 27 March 2019
C
Chris.SE5:52 AM
That 25th March is a SPAM generated post !
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Wednesday, 10 April 2019
C
Colin Faulkner8:09 AM
Colne
I'm having problems receiving BBC HD, specifically Channel 54 from Winter Hill.
I live in a problematic location, just north of BB8 7ER (Colne) surrounded by hills - so have a large antenna and masthead amp - my main viewing is done via FreeSat.....
For a while I haven't been able to get anything on Freeview CH54.
The storms a few weeks ago rotated my aerial, so I was back on the roof on Sunday (7th April) and re-aligned it (bearing 222) and did a re-scan. Channel 54 came in good and strong along with all the rest.
But yesterday again nothing on that channel, although all the others - including Ch 55 (also DTG-6) still come in clear and strong.
Any ideas why my rig is so selective to chop out 737.8MHz?
Colin
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Colin's: mapC's Freeview map terrainC's terrain plot wavesC's frequency data C's Freeview Detailed Coverage
MikeP
9:17 AM
9:17 AM
Colin Faulkner:
If you look at the Digital UK Coverage Checker, at Coverage Checker - Detailed View you will see just how problematic your location is. Winter Hill is a poor choice and Bilsdale may be a better option and possibly worth trying. They both need either a Group A, a GroupT or a wideband aerial. So you could try turning your existing Group A aerial to a bearing of 50 degrees instead of 221 degrees. Then a manual retune to the channels provided from Bilsdale: 26, 29, 23, 43, 46, 40, 31 and 37.
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Friday, 12 April 2019
C
Colin Faulkner2:58 PM
Hi Mike, thanks for the reply.
Yes, reception isn't easy here - I do get good reception most of the time on non-HD channels.
Back in the analogue days (20 years ago) I researched reception here using Terrain (Megalithia) and used Bilsdale with a Televes DAT 75 (+MRD) but it was such a large antenna that eventually the wind loading broke the 2" alloy mounting pole on the chimney and I switched to Satellite....
About 5(?) years ago I was given a Vision 'Stealth' twin array, so started messing about with UHF again.
Can't remember why I settled on Winter Hill finally - I may swing it round and try again.
Still can't understand why I worked so well on that Sunday - and why I can get CH55 with no problems.
Also looking at Coverage Checker - Detailed View I may see things improve in 2020 when all the channels are grouped down at the lower end?
As an aside, this site is so full of info (perhaps too much) Brian Butterworth (and many others I suspect) do a great job.
Again, thanks for the help.
Colin
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Wednesday, 17 April 2019
C
Chris.SE5:59 AM
Colin Faulkner:
Just a thought, you haven't got any boxes with RF outputs that might be causing interference to Ch.54? Easy to overlook sometimes!
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C
Colin Faulkner2:10 PM
Hi Chris, thanks for the suggestion.
But all of my UHF equipped gear (apart from the tele and Humax Freeview Play recorder) have gone for recycling/landfill :) none have re-modulators.
There could be co-channel interference locally, but I reckon the terrain between me and Winter Hill effectively rejects Ch.54 and plays havoc with the HD reception or perhaps Ch.54 is output at a lower level, who knows.
But it's academic, as when the easterly subsided at the weekend I rotated the rig and (despite the 50 odd miles) all available channels come in strong and clear.
All good then, I now have a Freeview backup for my satellite reception (also not immune to weather conditions) and we'll see what happens when it rains and snows....
I remembered why I went off Bilsdale - being 'rural' we and neighbours have horses etc. line-of-site to Bilsdale goes over a few electric fence field loops.
When the fences were on we got a constant audible 'ticking' every 30 seconds or so when the fences pulsed 3KV or so.
That was the old analogue system - doesn't seem to interfere with the digital reception - yet.....
Cheers
Colin
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Friday, 19 April 2019
Friday, 10 May 2019
G
Gary Whittle8:53 PM
I have suddenly experienced reception issues listening to L B C radio from the Winter Hill D1 National transmitter. I listen to numerous DAB stations from this site without any problems, but signal strength has become weaker from stations using D1 National.
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Wednesday, 12 June 2019
J
js5:13 AM
EIT errors update.
There are 1364 events, whose title or description or both, contain invalid codes, in the current Freeview EIT off DVB-T multiplexes from Winter Hill.
Having failed to get through to Digital UK, I tried this route:
Radio & Television Investigation Service - Diagnostic form
with the Tell the BBC' option specifying "Which BBC service?" as "EPG".
This is was my message:
**********
Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off North West multiplex BBC A.
See https://pastebin.com/KCQXirUA for an explanation and complete list.
See also:
Winter Hill (Bolton, England) Full Freeview transmitter | free and easy
Winter Hill (Bolton, England) Full Freeview transmitter | free and easy
An independent confirmation here:
"Unknown unicode character in EPG title crashes scheduled rec"
SmartDVB
**********
That was a week ago and nothing has changed.
I had set the paste at pastebin.com to expire in 7 days, so that has now been removed, but, here is the current version:
https://pastebin.com/DJpnCdpw
As I explained in the ukfree.tv links above, the EITs off the BBCA and BBCB multiplexes differ.
Here is the full list of errors showing how most of the BBCA EIT errors have been inadvertently 'fixed' by the omission of the offending characters, leaving grammatical errors in their stead:
https://pastebin.com/nL3DHQhP
Note that the event times in this list are in GMT.
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Sunday, 16 June 2019
C
Chris.SE2:59 AM
js:
You've never commented on whether you had any success contacting Arqiva directly as I suggested about this issue.
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