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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 18/11/2024 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

Sunday, 13 September 2020

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

12:23 PM

Bad Codes Update.

Something is happening here. Maybe it's finally being fixed.

There were 1399 invalid codes in the EIT of 2020/09/10. Many have now been corrected, leaving a mere 296 errors in the current EIT.

Who knows how many devices have been crippled by this garbage. A few years ago, all it took was a missing slash character in the EIT data to crash Sony PVRs across the country.

Here is an excerpt from the error report generated by my EIT parser. Note: Some errors are repeated because they are on each of the three Local Multiplexes or both BBCA - real and unreal - multiplexes:

Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off North BBC A. Date: 2020/09/13 00:45:19

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 296 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x0B, 6, 2.03%
0x18, 2, 0.68%
0x19, 280, 94.59%
0x1C, 2, 0.68%
0x1D, 6, 2.03%

There are 267 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.

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

CBeebies, 2
BBC World Sv., 1
BBC Radio 4, 2
CBeebies, 2
BBC World Sv., 1
BBC Radio 4, 2
YAAAS!, 3
Blaze, 6
Ketchup, 4
RNIB Connect, 3
ADULT Studio 66, 32
POP Max, 137
Sony Movies Classic, 4
That's TV, 29
Sony Movies Classic, 4
That's TV, 29
Sony Movies Classic, 4
CBeebies HD, 2

Events with invalid codes in the eight-day EIT off multiplex BBC A at 2020/09/13 00:45:19:

#1: 202 CBeebies, Tue 15 Sep 09:15 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Don Quixote{}. Pug needs a story about how to be brave, so Dog and Pug meet the great Spanish knight Don Quixote and his partner, Sancho Panza. Also in HD. [S]", description error byte: 0x0B

#2: 202 CBeebies, Wed 16 Sep 09:15 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Amazing Facts{}. Dog and Pug are talking about facts, and they go on an adventure to check one of Pug's. Also in HD. [S]", description error byte: 0x0B

#3: 710 BBC World Sv., Sun 13 Sep 02:50 - 03:00: title = "Over to You", description = "Many millions rely on it to listen every day, so what does the future hold for shortwave? Plus Weekend is back after earlier this year being {L''}temporarily suspended{R''} due to Covid..", description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D

#4: 704 BBC Radio 4, Tue 15 Sep 16:00 - 16:30: title = "Costing the Earth", description = "Peter Gibbs looks into housing developments and asks how we respond in an environmentally positive way to Boris Johnson's call to arms to "build build build{R''} post lockdown.", description error byte: 0x1D

#5: 704 BBC Radio 4, Wed 16 Sep 21:00 - 21:30: title = "Costing the Earth", description = "Peter Gibbs looks into housing developments and asks how we respond in an environmentally positive way to Boris Johnson's call to arms to "build build build{R''} post lockdown.", description error byte: 0x1D

#6: 757 CBeebies, Tue 15 Sep 09:15 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Don Quixote{}. Pug needs a story about how to be brave, so Dog and Pug meet the great Spanish knight Don Quixote and his partner, Sancho Panza. Also in HD. [S]", description error byte: 0x0B

#7: 757 CBeebies, Wed 16 Sep 09:15 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Amazing Facts{}. Dog and Pug are talking about facts, and they go on an adventure to check one of Pug's. Also in HD. [S]", description error byte: 0x0B

#8: 772 BBC World Sv., Sun 13 Sep 02:50 - 03:00: title = "Over to You", description = "Many millions rely on it to listen every day, so what does the future hold for shortwave? Plus Weekend is back after earlier this year being {L''}temporarily suspended{R''} due to Covid..", description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D

#9: 766 BBC Radio 4, Tue 15 Sep 16:00 - 16:30: title = "Costing the Earth", description = "Peter Gibbs looks into housing developments and asks how we respond in an environmentally positive way to Boris Johnson's call to arms to "build build build{R''} post lockdown.", description error byte: 0x1D

#10: 766 BBC Radio 4, Wed 16 Sep 21:00 - 21:30: title = "Costing the Earth", description = "Peter Gibbs looks into housing developments and asks how we respond in an environmentally positive way to Boris Johnson's call to arms to "build build build{R''} post lockdown.", description error byte: 0x1D

#11: 212 YAAAS!, Mon 14 Sep 10:00 - 14:00: title = "Cracking! Wallace & Gromit", description = "Wallace{R'}s inventions are truly imaginative if not always the most efficient!Cracking Contraptionsis a showcase of 10 short films about Wallace{R'}s wonderfully eccentric ideas.", description error bytes: 0x19, 0x19

#12: 212 YAAAS!, Tue 15 Sep 14:00 - 17:00: title = "Swamp Chats With Shrek & Donkey", description = "Shrek and Donkey dish the dirt on all fairytales in this talk show. They give the scoop on things like Prince Charming{R'}s dating life, or how to make Little Red Riding Hood stew.", description error byte: 0x19

#13: 212 YAAAS!, Sat 19 Sep 06:00 - 10:00: title = "Purr-fect Puss In Boots", description = "Known the world over as the most daring swashbuckler ladies{R'} man, and all around coolest cat, Puss In Boots shares advice, stories and tasty titbits with his fans.", description error byte: 0x19

#14: 063 Blaze, Sun 13 Sep 20:00 - 21:00: title = "Ray Winstone's Sicily", description = "Palermo, Fit for a Duchess: Ray discovers Palermo{R'}s markets and its traders. They try the opera - which isn't a great success - and charm a Duchess.", description error byte: 0x19

#15: 063 Blaze, Mon 14 Sep 22:00 - 23:00: title = "Ronnie O{R'}Sullivan{R'}s American...", description = "...Hustle: Chicago: Ronnie and Matt's road trip continues in Chicago, where the snooker champion faces one of the game's deadliest players, 'Black Widow' Jeanette Lee.", title error bytes: 0x19, 0x19

...

#265: 050 Sony Movies Classic, Fri 18 Sep 15:40 - 17:00: title = "Micki & Maude", description = "A TV reporter longs for a baby, but when both his wife and his mistress announce they{R'}re pregnant, he finds himself with more than he hoped for. Stars Dudley Moore, Amy Irving, Ann Reinking. (1984)", description error byte: 0x19

#266: 205 CBeebies HD, Tue 15 Sep 09:15 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Don Quixote{}. Pug needs a story about how to be brave, so Dog and Pug meet the great Spanish knight Don Quixote and his partner, Sancho Panza. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B

#267: 205 CBeebies HD, Wed 16 Sep 0915 - 09:20: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Amazing Facts{}. Dog and Pug are talking about facts, and they go on an adventure to check one of Pug's. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B

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js's 841 posts NL flag

Tuesday, 15 September 2020

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

3:54 PM

js: When I see errors that probably will not be seen by anyone else, that may cause problems, I feel the need to alert people to them.

When the subject matter is complex, if there are no appropriate avenues of contact, it becomes impossible to communicate.

Regarding the invalid codes in the EIT data, I have tried to get the message through on a number of occasions, both to DUK and the BBC, evidently without success.

In case it is thought that I am making some mistake and the errors are mine, here is the proof that they are real:

In this example event, the description contains a "zero-width space", Unicode 200B, and the Freeview description contains the invalid code 0B in its stead.

For those, like me, who don't know what a "zero-width space" is, see Zero-width space - Wikipedia

The same program is used to read both Freeview and Freesat EITs.

When the EIT is Huffman coded, which is the case for all Freesat data and all data, the utf-8 bytes of the Huffman decoder, which are untouched by my program, may be compared directly as follows:

Freesat:
CBeebies HD, Mon 21 Sep 09:15 - 09:25: Dog Loves Books
Dog Loves Calm.
Huffman: 44 6F 67 20 4C 6F 76 65 73 20 43 61 6C 6D E2 80 8B 2E

Freeview:
CBeebies HD, Mon 21 Sep 09:15 - 09:25: Dog Loves Books
Dog Loves Calm{}.
Huffman: 44 6F 67 20 4C 6F 76 65 73 20 43 61 6C 6D 0B 2E

Freesat: E2 80 8B
Freeview: 0B

E2 80 8B in binary is 11100010 10000000 10001011

For 16 bit codes U+0800 U+FFFF, 3 bytes are used for the utf-8 representation: 1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx

1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
11100010 10000000 10001011

So the Unicode code bits are 0010 000000 001011 which in hex is 20 0B

All we have on Freeview is 0B, an invalid code, which is the low order byte of 200B.

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js's 841 posts NL flag

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

3:58 PM

Another example, this time in the title:

:
Channel 5 HD, Tue 22 Sep 04:30 - 05:25: Now That's Funny
Huffman: 4E 6F 77 20 54 68 61 74 E2 80 99 73 20 46 75 6E 6E 79

:
Channel 5 HD, Tue 22 Sep 04:30 - 05:25: Now That{R'}s Funny
Huffman: 4E 6F 77 20 54 68 61 74 19 73 20 46 75 6E 6E 79

Huffman: 4E 6F 77 20 54 68 61 74 E2 80 99 73 20 46 75 6E 6E 79
Huffman: 4E 6F 77 20 54 68 61 74 19 73 20 46 75 6E 6E 79

E2 80 99
19

1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
11100010 10000000 10011001

0010 000000 011001 = 20 19

Unicode/UTF-8-character table - starting from code position 2000

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js's 841 posts NL flag

Thursday, 17 September 2020

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

5:22 AM

Seeing some tropo again. D3&4 off , last seen on the 12 August, 190km distant, coming in on 506MHz .

As always now when tropo is about, Com7 is intermittent, on or below the cliff edge with around 20dB s/n.

A Hisense telly reports as 86% strength with jumping between 0 and 100%.

Back on Feb 7 am, picked up all three PSBs off 275km away.

I won't see those again now is on the same frequencies.

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js's 841 posts US flag

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

6:48 AM

Now getting perfect of all three Coms on , and .

Com7 is completely gone.

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js's 841 posts DE flag

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

7:09 AM

js:

Hadn't experienced any myself, but not had time to go looking. I see there was a lot of tropo at the beginning of the week and more predicted towards the end of the week/weekend and predictions suggest some of it could be very strong. I note some regular dxers have been busy and some unusually strong dx on the I-o-W a few days ago!

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Chris.SE's 4,364 posts GB flag

Karl
2:34 PM

The updated /retune for Arts and Pick have just gone live but I've also noticed that COM 7 seems to have gone missing. It was fine last night.

Wondering if it has been turned off permanently now. We know it is coming but... today?

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Karl's 20 posts GB flag

Chris.SE

_{sentiment_very_satisfied}Platinum

2:47 PM

Karl:

No, COM7 is still there. BUT there has been/is some significant "tropospheric ducting" around (see Effect of tropospheric ducting on Freeview | Help receiving TV and radio for a simplistic explanation) causing disruption in various parts of the country at different times and unfortunately it is likely to be around over the next few days. However, predictions, like weather forecasts, could change!

If you can do a manual tune on UHF that may be the best way to get correctly tuned without the possibility of disrupting the other multiplexes as the "tropo" could affect them as well, although your set will be able to cope with limited it may baulk a bit on a total retune at any given time, then you'd have to go through the process again when signals are more stable.

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Chris.SE's 4,364 posts GB flag

Karl
5:16 PM

Chris.SE:

Many thanks for the info Chris. Coincidental then that it happens today of all days when a retune was performed. COM7 (News 24 in HD) has been fine right up until today.

Thanks again.

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Karl's 20 posts GB flag

_{sentiment_satisfied}Gold

7:45 PM

Chris.SE: Well, the Coms soon went but I managed to grab some transport stream samples and read the SI tables out of them while they were up.

I also did a CrazyScan spectrum at the tail end of it:

tropo ImgBB

The image is of the active tropo - coloured red - followed by a scan made tonight, followed by a superimposition of the two that shows the difference.

Com7 appears as an undecodable lump of carrier at 746 MHz in the top scan.

The Hisense telly still reported as 86% strength with zero .

The s/n of BBCB, on 586 MHz, at 27dB, was down from 35dB - presumably due to CCI from Mendip.

The Mendip SDN peak at 690 MHz is impressive.

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js's 841 posts DE flag

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