Thanks, so probably safe to assume that the Kendal/South Lakes TSID is 4178.

I get West region here in Gloucester, but can pick up a weaker Ridge Hill signal. No sign of our local BBC radio from there at the moment.

The only real omission that was somewhat of a surprise to me was Hannington where two flavours of Radio Solent are being carried. I am not sure how many use it in Dorset; I would have guessed fewer than in Oxfordshire but I might be wrong. (This assumes splitting off of Hannington would be possible.)

You'd never expect to get it onto Sutton Coldfield when there are omissions of stations with many more people within its main service area, such as Leicester.

I drive down the A303 quite a bit and I would say Hannington is "favourite" to Amesbury / Stonehenge which are still well in Wiltshire then you get Salisbury before you tend to get Mendip then the South West. Years ago in UHF days I stayed in the Travel Lodge in Irchester and got 4 regions West, South West, South (south so to speak) and Wales. I was in Mere the other week which is on the border of Wilts, Dorset and Somerset and I'm sure the were on Mendip.

On the Sutton Coldfield issue where the mast is I could nether workout why there was not a East Midlands option added at change over like Ridge Hill, though again there are a number of transmitters which could / would be better served having 2 or even regions on them. Sandy Heath could have London and East Midlands as it's signals go from Peterborough / Kettering to Harlow. Hannington South and London, and Beckley anyone's guess really which brings us back to local radio stations.

With Beckley I always wonder what would happen if it was turned off, I'm sure most of it's footprint could pick up another region in these days of stronger signals. Though in my case living in OX4 / Cowley I can get Sandy Heath with a loft aerial, always could get it in UHF days. Next would be Sutton Coldfield (never tried Lark Stoke since they increased it's power) as in VHF days that's where my house's signal came from. Not much chance of Hannington or Crystal Palace but 150 yards away there are a row of houses on CP, but parts of Cowley are on Sutton Coldfield. With East Oxford, St Clements and Morrell Avenue on Hannington. The City Centre could be a nightmare for homes once all the building is finished, High Street is already a problem by all accounts.

I'm so pleased that this project is still going ahead, I did wonder if it would be kicked into the long grass with the current pressures on BBC finances.

Have these started to appear on the EPG yet? I checked Talcolneston before I went to work but nothing, I won't be able to try again (from Sudbury) until 7pm.

The idea goes back many years ....,and so was in the plans and budgeting with Siemens now ATOS to,do.... And is not that expensive ... As the feeds are all there with the LR transmitter contract and move to ViLor

Although there are significant overlaps for Oxford, in percentage terms I think it is Waltham that is the most 'redundant'. Only about 10% in its main coverage area are technically incapable of being able to receive an alternative main transmitter with a standard grade aerial set-up. Still that amounts to around 300k people, so it isn't going to be switched off tomorrow.

If there had always been an intention for an 'East Midlands' region a more suitable site than Waltham would have been chosen I guess.

Thank you for that. I have had trouble with USB dongles for DVB-T. Which one did you use?

I have a TBS5220 which does not work for me - the driver won't work.

I have a DVB-S one which works perfectly. The 290e pCTV stick does not work either as the driver will not install because I already have a 461e driver installed. So no luck!

Which one do you use?

Thanks

BBC Derby and BBC Lincolnshire have just popped up in the SDT on Winter Hill - not services transmitted from WH, but from a neighbouring region which I presume have just started up there.

Yep, Lincolnshire, Leicester, Derby and Northampton now all on the EPG via Nottingham relay.

Are the new stations using the standard "BBC Local Radio" graphic or are the graphics bespoke to the individual station?

Bog standard graphics

719 BBC Radio Berkshire
720 BBC 3CR
722 BBC Surrey
734 BBC Essex

Have all appeared on Crystal Palace but the Youview box has annoyingly put BBC Essex on 800 and BBC Surrey on 801, as it sometimes does. Other TV is fine.

BBC Three Counties Radio now available from Beckley (shown as BBC Three in the EPG of at least one of my receivers).

BBC Sussex from Hannington also now available.

That's closer to what I thought was true. I didn't think that every main transmitter had to be reconfigured each time a channel is added or deleted

So it makes you wonder why they're being so cautious. Adding a few radio channels isn't exactly dangerous? They are happy to make other changes on a national basis in one step.


I have been using the RTL2832 dongle. It works with TS reader. It's not 100% (seems to have a lot of decode errors) but it's perfectly fine for looking at the data tables

South East region (from Dover here) updated to include Kent, Sussex, Surrey, London and Essex (I think).
Problem is that it's the wrong day to update because of the atmospheric conditions as I'm also getting Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge from Sudbury via the back of the aerial so not sure what is coming from where.
Also got London Live for a while which is crazy...

Had to do a retune of my TV (Panasonic on Tacolneston) to get anything new on the EPG.

Now have Cambridge(722), Norfolk (719), and the newly added London (721), Suffolk (720) and Essex (734)

Three more things to never listen to on a TV set.

Radio Derby seems to be live from Sutton Coldfield - it's showing up on a manual scan of channel 43, and is appearing as 735 in the programme listings. WM is there as well, but that's all that's showing up. No H&W or C&W.

Presumably they're enabling all transmitters for a given service at once, rather than all services for a given transmitter? Makes sense in communication terms, I guess.

They seem to have decided to add stations with overlapping coverage to adjacent regions. Similarly, Radio Lincolnshire has been added to the Emley Moor and Belmont transmitter groups.

The 290e works very well if you can manage to sort out the driver issue.

The August DVB-T210 is also good, relatively cheap and the drivers don't strip out null packets, so this model can be used for monitoring null packets.

It's ironic that the two Non-fulltime local stations in the southwest (Solent for Dorset and Somerset) end up getting the widest distribution across the West Country on Freeview (I know Bristol is too but that ruins my observations!)

Thanks for the info. I will check these out. I am quite cross I cannot get my TBS5220 to work as it took a lot of tracking down.

As for BBC local radio, all stations that have launched today on Freeview are added to all transmitters taking them and they have the same EPG number wherever then are receivable. If they did it trransmitter by transmitter instead of service by service, that would be more complicated I think.

Can that get DVB-T2 muxes as well such as PSB3, COM7 and COM8?

Unfortunately not, I bought it for its "cheap SDR" capability. It is only like a tenner on eBay, so worth a punt even though it doesn't do T2