Irish broadcasting Frequencies

RTE still transmit on VHF in certain areas. TV3 is in UHF. All TV will more than likely move to UHF when DTT arrives. Radio is broadcast in VHF and likely to remain so in digital. At least two channel spacing is required as a guardband on analogue. Irish channels are usually around Ch40 to 50 depending on your location. The UK channels broadcast from the north are from 22 on. Most VCRs are tuned for Ch21

Also the exact frequencies can be found in the ComReg table of frequency allocations on their website. www.comreg.ie

garethmc wrote:

Hey there, Hopefully someone can help me with the below information or point me in the right direction on where to find this kind of information for Ireland.

What frequencie range does our antenna system transmit?
It is all UHF starting at Ch.22 yes?
Have all the VHF transmissions now been stopped?


Also for Radio I’d like to know…

Min/Max bandwidth range and the tuning increment for Ireland. i.e. the stepping increments while scanning?

Also anyone know of tuning overide tables in MS Windows, Especially Media Center Edition.

Television transmits on a frequency range between 174-223 Mhz (VHF Band III) and 470-854 Mhz (UHF Bands IV & V). VHF Band I Television (44-68 Mhz) ceased in Ireland for terrestial transmission in 2000 IIRC, but still exists on cable.

RTE1 & RTE2 use a combined VHF Band III and UHF network. TV3 and TG4are available on a UHF only network. Additionally TV3 are only on UHF from the "main" transmitters and two relay stations, one in Cork and one in Limerick.

VHF Television is still used extensively in many rural areas although most of the relay stations that used to have it now have RTE1 and RTE2 on UHF along with TG4 and have closed down VHF transmissions there. VHF broadcasts are still made from Kippure (Dublin/Northeast), Mount Leinster (Southeast), Mullaghanish (Southwest), Maghera (West), Truskmore (North West) and the Monaghan town relay and are likely to do so until the eventual analogue shut-off.

VHF Band III Channels are D, E, F, G, H and I. J is no longer used as that is part of the DAB band which has allocations in the Republic and is already in use in Northern Ireland.

UHF uses channels from 21 to 68. A Channel 69 does exist but is not used for broadcast except for "deflectors". Channels 36 and 38 are also not used for broadcasting and channels 35 and 37 have only been released for doing so in the past 10 years. As a rule of thumb each UHF transmitting station has four UHF frequencies allocated to it and follow a channel pattern to allow for easier frequency reuse and for grouped aerials - a grouped aerialis one that is optimised to receive a certain group of frequencies within the UHF band at the expense of others. The general allocations are...

Group A

21, 24, 27, 31
22, 25, 28, 32
23, 26, 29, 33

Group B

39, 42, 45, 49
40, 43, 46, 50
41, 44, 47, 50

Group C

53, 57, 60, 63
54, 58, 61, 64
55, 59, 62, 65
52, 56, 66, 68

There are exceptions to this, most notibaly at a few relay stations but Three Rock Mountain in Dublin also falls foul of this pattern with its allocations of 29, 33, 35 and 55. Also notice within the groups above that channels 30, 34, 35, 37, 48 and 67 lie "spare" - these are often used by very low power relay station (less that 20w) where the usual frequencies are not available.

Digital Terrestial Television is available from transmitters in Northern Ireland but has yet to broadcast from the Republic although frequency allocations have been set and in some cases parts of transmitting equiptment have already been installed at a few sites. This uses the same sets of frequencies on UHF as analogue transmissions do, though RTE have no plans to transmit DTT on VHF but they did do some tests a while back.

For Radio, in the VHF Band II which is used for FM broadcasts, each channel uses a carrier that is generally 0.2 MHz wide although 0.3 Mhz is the bare minimum guard given for stereo broadcasts in the same local area, with 0.4 being the usual minumum. The minimum increments as defined by the EBU are 0.05 Mhz although no transmitter in Ireland uses an xxx.x5 MHz frequency so the increments are in 0.1 Mhz. There is no particular hurry to switch these transmissions over to Digital as the frequency band that is used (87.6 - 107.9 Mhz) is not allocated for any form of Digital Audio Broadcasting in Ireland or even the UK.

On Medium Wave and Long Wave, each channel has a 9kHz spacing and in the local area you cannot use two adjacent channels side by side. You might get away with two adjacent channels but if one channel has a strong local broadcast it may affect a more distant station e.g. an unlicenced transmitter in Co.Monaghan on 549kHz does cause some problems to RTE Radio 1 on 567 kHz within a few miles to the Monaghan transmitter,and this was very noticable when the 567kHz transmitter was off for maintenance, with the 549 signal splattering into the empty 567kHz channel.

Er, VCRs and other things with RF outputs (game consoles, old computers, etc.) are supposed to be tuned to channel E36.

no that was changed to facilitate Channel 5 in the UK

Byte is right
Among the default frequencies commonly found are Ch 21, Ch 36, Ch 48 Ch 68 and Ch 69

In the very early eighties some games consoles used Ch21 and had no retuning adjustment then Channel Four opened up and rendered them a pile of junk :rolleyes:

later videos tended to have limited tuning (say 30-40) with 36 as default but with the arrival of channel five the range has broadened out (to full band in many cases) with no (standard) default nowadays