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Archive (2002-)
All posts by Steve Donaldson
Below are all of Steve Donaldson's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.jack: With respect to why C26 keeps cropping up, then you have touched on why. It was your comment about BBC Radio Shropshire appearing that caused me to see whether it is carried by Sutton Coldfield, and it turns out that it is not. C26, as has already been mentioned, is PSB1 from The Wrekin, and this is where BBC Radio Shropshire is coming from.
Freeview has capacity for five BBC local radio stations. The BBC West Midlands region has three main transmitters: Ridge Hill, Sutton Coldfield and The Wrekin, and collectively they cover a very large area. Across that area there are more than five local stations, and consequently each carries a different set of five stations. The PSB1 multiplexes from each of the transmitters are thus different, even though they are the same region.
The BBC Reception checker [bbc.co.uk/reception] allows one to enter a postcode to see what transmitters may be available there. This includes a full list of services (TV and radio channels) carried on each multiplex by transmitter. I entered postcodes within the service area of each of the three transmitters to see which BBC local radio stations each carries and it turned up the following:
- The Wrekin: BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester, BBC Radio Shropshire, BBC Radio Stoke, BBC WM 95.6
- Sutton Coldfield: BBC Coventry & Warwickshire, BBC Radio Derby, BBC Hereford & Worcester, BBC Radio Stoke, BBC WM 95.6
- Ridge Hill: BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester, BBC Radio Shropshire, BBC WM 95.6
From this we can see that all three transmitters carry BBC CWR (formerly BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire), BBC Hereford & Worcester and BBC WM.
Of the four other stations:
- BBC Radio Derby is carried by Sutton Coldfield only.
- BBC Radio Gloucestershire is carried by Ridge Hill only.
- BBC Radio Shropshire is carried by The Wrekin and Ridge Hill.
- BBC Radio Stoke is carried by The Wrekin and Sutton Coldfield.
Freeview lists these seven stations as each assuming a different logical channel number[1]:
711 BBC CWR
712 BBC H&W
713 BBC Shropshire
714 BBC WM
715 BBC Stoke
716 BBC Gloucestershire
717 BBC Derby
With the Digital Bitrate website we can see the output of some transmitters across the country[2]. While it doesn't feature The Wrekin, it does have Lark Stoke. Lark Stoke and The Wrekin operate as a single-frequency network for the PSBs, and thus we can take the output of Lark Stoke's PSBs as being identical to those of The Wrekin. Digital Bitrate samples Sutton Coldfield too.
We can see that the local BBC radio stations carried by each of the above transmitters is as listed above. The TSIDs (transport stream IDs) are different for PSB1 per transmitter which isn't surprising. However, the TSIDs for PSB2 and for PSB3 are the same for all three transmitters.
PSB1 TSIDs are as follows:
Ridge Hill: 4176
Sutton Coldfield: 4165
Lark Stoke: 4179
The TSID of PSB2 is the same for all three: 8198. PSB3 is also the same for all three: 16517.
Of course, while the PSB1s are different (they have different TSIDs), the majority of the services carried on them are the same. For example, BBC One West Midlands is SID (service ID) 4165, and this is the same for all three transmitters sampled. BBC Two is 4287.
During the automatic tuning scan, the box picks up PSB2 from The Wrekin on C23. Later on, when it gets to C46, it picks up Sutton Coldfield's counterpart and sees it's got all the same services on it and probably prefers it because the signal is better (potentially moving the others to the 800s, depending on how the box works, of which I'm not familiar).
By contrast, having scanned C26, PSB1 from The Wrekin, later on at C43 it tunes PSB1 from Sutton Coldfield. All but BBC Shropshire may be overwritten.
The situation at your receivers is one where these two PSB1 muxes are both the same region, but different TSIDs with one service different on each, and all the rest the same. Sutton Coldfield carries BBC Derby whereas The Wrekin does not, and the latter has BBC Shropshire but the former does not. Could this be the cause of the crashes?
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[1] https://www.freeview.co.uk/corporate/platform-management/channel-listings-industry-professionals
[2] https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?lang=en&liste=2&live=35
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Thursday 6 November 2025 12:46AM
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