The Wrexham-Rhos transmitting station is a
digital television relay of
Moel-y-Parc, and forms part of the
Wales television region. Despite its name, the station is situated in
Moss Village and serves the city of
Wrexham, the northern area of
Wrexham County Borough and south-western
Flintshire. It is a free-standing lattice tower structure serving around 85,000 homes which are unable to receive broadcasts from Moel-y-Parc due to
Hope Mountain
Hope Mountain, commonly called Mount Hope, is a prominent mountain overlooking the town of Hope, British Columbia, Canada from the south. It is the northernmost summit of the Skagit Range of the Cascade Mountains and stands above the confluence of ...
.
This area is traditionally served by
English transmitters at
Winter Hill and
The Wrekin, which have historically provided English-language channels
Channel 4 and
Channel 5, plus the
digital terrestrial services
ONdigital/ITV Digital (from 1998 to 2002) and
Freeview from 2002 onwards. Wrexham-Rhos was constructed to coincide with the 1977
National Eisteddfod
The National Eisteddfod of Wales (Welsh: ') is the largest of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales. Its eight days of competitions and performances are considered the largest music and poetry festival in Europe. Competitors ...
in Wrexham, initially providing
S4C
S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking ...
and
BBC One Wales, later joined by
HTV Wales in 1997 and
BBC Two Wales
BBC Two Wales is the national variation of BBC Two for BBC Cymru Wales. It is broadcast from BBC Cymru Wales New Broadcasting House, Central Square in Cardiff with live continuity provided by a team of announcer/directors. The channel opts out f ...
in 1999.
The DAB digital radio transmitter on the site was switched on in 2013. It had a temporary outage in 2017.
Services available
Analogue television
1977 - 1 November 1982
1 November 1982 - 30 March 1997
30 March 1997 - 1999
1999 - 2000
2000 - 28 October 2009
Prior to analogue switch-off, Wrexham-Rhos broadcast four of the five national terrestrial stations. Channels 1 to 3 were broadcast at 200 W
ERP, while S4C was broadcast at 400 W. In 1998, due to the upcoming launch of
ONdigital from neighbouring transmission site,
Winter Hill, S4C from the relay was required to change frequency (from UHF Channel 67) two years later. A message was displayed telling viewers to re-tune their televisions of the channel were carried for a couple of months. When the original frequency was switched off, the power on the newer version was increased.
Analogue and digital television
28 October 2009 - 25 November 2009
Digital television
25 November 2009 - present
At present, the station broadcasts three of the six national digital terrestrial television multiplexes on the "Freeview Lite" service. The station switched over to digital transmissions from analogue throughout November 2009, and remaining analogue services ceased at midnight on 25 November 2009. BBC A and Digital 3&4 broadcast using
MPEG2 compression on
DVB-T
DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Febr ...
standards, whilst the HD multiplex, BBC B, uses
DVB-T2.
Analogue radio (FM VHF)
Digital radio (DAB)
On air date March 2013
[Radio Listeners Guide 2010]
See also
*
Winter Hill transmitting station
*
The Wrekin transmitting station
The Wrekin transmitting station is a telecommunications and broadcasting facility on The Wrekin, a hill in the county of Shropshire, England. It includes a tall free-standing lattice tower with transmitting antennas attached at various heights ...
References
External links
mb21 - The Transmission Gallery - photographsukfree.tv Shutdown plans for Wrexham-Rhos
{{Moel-y-Parc UHF DVB Transmitter Group
Buildings and structures in Wrexham County Borough
Transmitter sites in Wales