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Full Freeview on the Mendip (Somerset, England) transmitter

first published this on - UK Free TV
sa_streetviewGoogle Streetviewsa_gmapsGoogle mapsa_bingBing mapsa_gearthGoogle Earthsa_gps51.237,-2.626 or 51°14'12"N 2°37'33"Wsa_postcodeBA5 3LB

 

The symbol shows the location of the Mendip (Somerset, England) transmitter which serves 720,000 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 Mendip (Somerset, England) mast?

Mendip transmitter - Mendip transmitter: Possible effect on TV reception week commencing 25/03/2024 Pixelation or flickering on some or all channels Digital tick


Choose from three options: ■ List by multiplex ■ List by channel number ■ List by channel name
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Which Freeview channels does the Mendip 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.

MuxH/VFrequencyHeightModeWatts
PSB1
BBCA
 H max
C32 (562.0MHz)591mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
1 BBC One (SD) 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)591mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
3 ITV 1 (SD) (West), 4 Channel 4 (SD) South ads, 5 Channel 5, 6 ITV 2, 10 ITV3, 13 E4, 14 Film4, 15 Channel 4 +1 South ads, 18 More4, 26 ITV4, 28 ITVBe, 30 E4 +1, 35 ITV1 +1 (West),

PSB3
BBCB
 H max
C35 (586.0MHz)591mDTG-100,000W
Channel icons
46 5SELECT, 101 BBC One HD West, 102 BBC Two HD England, 103 ITV 1 HD (ITV Meridian Southampton), 104 Channel 4 HD South 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
C48 (690.0MHz)591mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
20 Drama, 21 5USA, 29 ITV2 +1, 32 5STAR, 33 5Action, 38 Channel 5 +1, 41 Legend, 42 GREAT! action, 57 Dave ja vu, 58 ITVBe +1, 59 ITV3 +1, 64 Blaze, 67 TRUE CRIME, 68 TRUE CRIME XTRA, 78 TCC, 81 Blaze +1, 83 Together TV, 89 ITV4 +1, 91 WildEarth, 209 Ketchup TV, 210 Ketchup Too, 211 YAAAS!, 267 Al Jazeera English, plus 30 others

COM5
ArqA
 H max
C33 (570.0MHz)591mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
11 Sky Mix, 17 Really, 19 Dave, 31 E4 Extra, 36 Sky Arts, 40 Quest Red, 43 Food Network, 47 Film4 +1, 48 Challenge, 49 4seven, 60 Drama +1, 65 That's TV 2, 70 Quest +1, 74 Yesterday +1, 75 That's 90s, 233 Sky News, plus 11 others

COM6
ArqB
 H max
C36 (594.0MHz)591mDTG-8100,000W
Channel icons
12 Quest, 25 W, 27 Yesterday, 34 GREAT! movies, 39 DMAX, 44 HGTV, 52 GREAT! romance, 56 That's TV (UK), 61 GREAT! movies extra, 63 GREAT! romance mix, 71 That’s 60s, 73 HobbyMaker, 82 Talking Pictures TV, 84 PBS America, 235 Al Jazeera Eng, plus 18 others

LBS
 H -10dB
C30 (546.0MHz)591mDTG-1210,000W
Channel icons
from 22nd September 2014: 7 Made in Bristol,

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

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

regional news image
BBC Points West 0.9m homes 3.4%
from Bristol BS8 2LR, 25km north (3°)
to BBC West region - 60 masts.
regional news image
ITV West Country News (East) 0.9m homes 3.4%
from Bristol BS4 3HG, 23km north (11°)
to ITV West region - 61 masts.
All of lunch, weekend and 50% evening news is shared with West Country (West)

Are there any self-help relays?

CheddarTransposer15 km E Weston-super-Mare1674 homes
LuccombeActive deflector6 km w Minehead38 homes

How will the Mendip (Somerset, England) transmission frequencies change over time?

1984-971997-981998-20102010-132013-182013-1727 Feb 2018
C/D EEEC/D EC/D E TW TW T
C30_local
C32BBCA
C33com7com7
C34D3+4
C35com8com8
C36ArqB
C37C5wavesC5waves
C48SDNSDNSDNSDN
C49tv_off BBCABBCA
C51tv_offLBSLBS
C52tv_offArqBArqBArqB
C54tv_offC4wavesC4wavesC4wavesD3+4D3+4D3+4
C55tv_offcom7tv_off
C56tv_offArqAArqAArqACOM8tv_off
C58tv_offBBC1wavesBBC1wavesBBC1wavesBBCBBBCBBBCB
C61ITVwavesITVwavesITVwavesBBCA
C64BBC2wavesBBC2wavesBBC2waves

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 24 Mar 10 and 7 Apr 10.

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

Analogue 1-4 500kW
Analogue 5(-6dB) 126kW
SDN, ARQA, ARQB, BBCA, D3+4, BBCB(-7dB) 100kW
com7(-8.4dB) 72.4kW
com8(-8.6dB) 69.1kW
Mux 1*, Mux 2*, Mux A*, Mux B*, Mux C*, Mux D*, LBS(-17dB) 10kW

Which companies have run the Channel 3 services in the Mendip transmitter area

Jan 1958-Jul 1968Television Wales and the West
Jul 1968-Feb 2004Harlech Television
Feb 2004-Dec 2014ITV plc
Feb 1983-Dec 1992TV-am•
Jan 1993-Sep 2010GMTV•
Sep 2010-Dec 2014ITV Daybreak•
• Breakfast ◊ Weekends ♦ Friday night and weekends † Weekdays only. Mendip was not an original Channel 3 VHF 405-line mast: the historical information shown is the details of the company responsible for the transmitter when it began transmitting Channel 3.

Comments
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
C
Chris Sharp
5:23 PM
Chepstow

Hi, I have a 26" Philips LCD TV and I am having problems with all BBC channels dropping out necessitating a retune. This possibly happened after a Digital TV Retune several weeks ago. About the same time I started using the HDMI port for Apple TV.

My work around for this frequent drop out is to manually retune on Frequency 698000 and 22 channels come back and work for a short time. The BBC channels just drop out after a while of watching say Channel 4. The Channel 4 screen goes blank but you get 10 seconds or so of sound and then it resets itself OK but any BBC channel is then lost the screen says No signal. On retuning watching a BBC channel can sometimes drop out or there is no problem for it stay stable hours.

I have followed the Freeview reset procedure but this had no effect.

I have contacted Philips and they say the problem is that This TV got a MPEG 2 tuner which is not compatible with current digital signal. The current digital standard stands for DVBT2 and your Tuner is DVBT. Unfortunately the modulation makes the difference as you can not keep your channels on TV's memory. The TV's built in tuner is not compatible after digital switchover, so what we recommend to do is to get a external freeview set-top box in order to receive channels properly.

From investigating the different coding of the multiplexes MPEG 4 is only used on HD, and all the rest of the multiplexes including BBC (non HD) are all MPEG 2. Any ideas what is going on?


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Chris Sharp's 2 posts GB flag
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M
MikeB
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

6:29 PM
Peterborough

Chris Sharp: I think what they are trying to say is that your Philips is a little old (a 26in Philips with one HDMI is perhaps seven years old or more(?), and the tuner just wont work any more. It happened a couple of times with customers following digital switchover, and our advice was exactly the same as that which Philips gave you - buy an external digibox.

Since you have one HDMI, you could use it for an HD PVR/digibox (and if you want to use Apple TV as well, there are HDMI switches available for less than £10), or just use scart. In the longer term, perhaps an upgrade to a newer TV.

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Dave Lindsay
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

6:59 PM

Chris Sharp: My thoughts on this as a technical bod is that there may be some remnant of the previous set-up still in the memory. You know that the set worked fine before the change of channel (frequency) so it is known to work with the post-switchover signals.

Here are some things I can think of to go through:

Is there some sort of factory reset or hard reset?

Can you try running the automatic tuning scan through with the aerial unpluged? If this apparently 'blanks' what's already stored then run it through again with the aerial plugged in.

Another thing to try is running the tuning scan through but having the aerial unplugged when it scans C49, so as not to have BBC standard definition services stored but so as to get at least one multiplex stored. Having powered it off, checked that everything that was stored is still stored try adding C49 (698MHz).

Can you tune in PSB1 (BBC standard definition) from the Chepstow relay transmitter on C24 (498MHz)? Having done this, in an effort to 'flush-out' whatever is apparently stuck in the memory and causing your issue, try retuning to Mendip.

-----

I think that Philips has got the wrong end of the stick. DVB-T2 is the mode used for Freeview HD. It can receive DVB-T whioch is the mode used for standard definition.

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Dave Lindsay's 5,724 posts GB flag
M
Michael
sentiment_satisfiedGold

10:00 PM

Chris: Presumably you have had no problems up until the March 27th retune - if so then clearly it is compatible with the post-DSO signal - Philips talking out of their arse!

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Michael's 358 posts GB flag
M
MikeB
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

10:18 PM

Chris - whats the model number? There is a small list here Obsolete Freeview Receiver List of some TV's with obsolete tuners (2k rather than 8k), although Michael has an excellent point - if was working up to a couple of weeks ago, whats changed?

However, if its going to be a complete faff to get it to work, then someones cast-off digibox is the quickest and easiest way to keep the set going. (PE12QN)

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MikeB's 2,579 posts GB flag
M
MikeB
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

10:20 PM

Just found this - Update Your Browser | Facebook

might be the answer, and echos what David suggested.

(PE12QN)

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MikeB's 2,579 posts GB flag
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
C
Chris Sharp
1:42 AM
Chepstow

Hi and thanks for your ideas.
A couple of things I should add, I have tried all of the resetting memory options but these have not worked. Specifically holding down the Menu button for 40 secs on the side of the TV had no effect.

The interesting thing is the TV works for hours with BBC frequency of 698000 kHz.it then seems to reset after changing channels to 794000kHz. Doing a manual retune seems odd to where after manually retuning to 698MHz and getting 22 channels, it defaults to "Discard" rather than "Store". Whereas when you do a full retune and finding 116 channels it defaults to "store".

All the other multiplexes seem to be unaffected.

Regards Chris

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Chris Sharp's 2 posts GB flag
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Monday, 3 June 2013
G
Gareth
12:31 PM
Chippenham

In Chippenham.

Lost a whole shed load of channels including itv4 & itv3. Does anyone know how long these interruptions will last?

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Gareth's 9 posts GB flag
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G
Gareth
12:36 PM
Chippenham

Just checked and it is COM4,COM5 & COM6 missing.

12:36 service has just come back.

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Dave Lindsay
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

12:39 PM

Gareth: See current Transmitter engineering message: "Over the next week Mendip main transmitter: TV (digital) Liable to interruption".

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Dave Lindsay's 5,724 posts GB flag
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Your comment please
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.

If you have no satellite signal, see Sky Digibox says 'No Signal' or 'Technical fault'

If you have other problems, please provide a full (not partial) postcode (or preferably enter it in box at the top right) and indicate where if aerial is on the roof, in the loft or elsewhere.

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