The Crystal Palace transmitting station, officially known as Arqiva Crystal Palace, is a broadcasting and telecommunications site in the
Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace may refer to:
Places Canada
* Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick
* Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario
* Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...
area of the
London Borough of Bromley
The London Borough of Bromley () is the southeasternmost of the London boroughs that make up Greater London, bordering the ceremonial county of Kent, which most of Bromley was part of before 1965. The borough's population is an estimated 332,336 ...
, England (). It is located on the site of the former television station and transmitter operated by
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
from 1933.
The station is the
eighth-tallest structure in London, and is best known as the main television transmitter for the London area. As such, it is the most important transmitter in the UK in terms of population covered. The transmitter is owned and operated by
Arqiva
Arqiva () is a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure, broadcast transmission and smart meter facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered at the former Independent Broadcasting Authority headquarters ...
.
History and development
The station was constructed in the mid-1950s among the ruins of
the Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibit ...
. The Aquarium on whose site it stands was destroyed in 1941 during the demolition of the Palace's north water tower.
(
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
's earlier transmitter and TV studios were a separate development at the other end of the Palace and perished with it in 1936.)
Its new
tower was the tallest structure in London until the
topping-out
In building construction, topping out (sometimes referred to as topping off) is a builders' rite traditionally held when the last beam (or its equivalent) is placed atop a structure during its construction. Nowadays, the ceremony is often parlaye ...
of
One Canada Square
One Canada Square is a skyscraper in Canary Wharf, London. It was completed in 1991 and is the third tallest building in the United Kingdom at above ground levelAviation charts issued by the Civil Aviation Authority containing 50 storeys.
On ...
at
Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located near the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central Lo ...
in 1990.
The first transmission from Crystal Palace took place on 28 March 1956, when it succeeded
the transmitter at Alexandra Palace where the BBC had started the world's first scheduled television service in November 1936. In November 1956 the first colour test transmissions began from Crystal Palace, relaying live pictures from the studios at Alexandra Palace after BBC TV had closed down for the night. In May 1958 the first experimental Band V 625-line transmissions started from Crystal Palace.
This tower was designed and built for BBC by British Insulated Callender's Construction Co. Ltd., with steelwork fabrication by
Painter Brothers Ltd. of Hereford. The tower was required to transmit television programmes with good reception in 1957, and has a total height of . The base of the tower is to a side, and it rises in twelve diminishing panels to a square platform at a height of .
The tower was constructed using two masts as
derrick
A derrick is a lifting device composed at minimum of one guyed mast, as in a gin pole, which may be articulated over a load by adjusting its guys. Most derricks have at least two components, either a guyed mast or self-supporting tower, and a ...
s, one and the other high, in conjunction with a
winch
A winch is a mechanical device that is used to pull in (wind up) or let out (wind out) or otherwise adjust the tension of a rope or wire rope (also called "cable" or "wire cable").
In its simplest form, it consists of a spool (or drum) attache ...
. At the time, a
16mm film
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...
of the construction by BICC was produced; this was available on loan from the BICC Film Library.
Innovations
The transmitter was the first in the UK to broadcast (experimentally) on
625 lines 625-lines is a standard-definition television resolution used mainly in the context of analog systems. It was first demonstrated by Mark Iosifovich Krivosheev in 1948.
Analog broadcast television standards
The following International Telecommunic ...
(
UHF) in 1962–1964, which it did on Channel 44, using a modified version of the
SMPTE
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
optical
monochrome
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
test card
A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast (often at sign-on and sign-off).
Used since the ear ...
(not to be confused with the
SMPTE colour bars).
On 18 July 1986, with the
First Night of the Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
on BBC2, the transmitter became the first in the world to transmit stereophonic sound using the
NICAM
Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex (NICAM) is an early form of lossy compression for digital audio. It was originally developed in the early 1970s for point-to-point links within broadcasting networks.Croll, M.G., Osborne, D.W. and Spi ...
digital sound system.
Television
When built it transmitted BBC Television on the
VHF 405-line
The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture.
It was ...
system; the
Croydon transmitter
The Croydon transmitting station is a broadcasting and telecommunications facility on Beaulieu Heights in Upper Norwood, London, England (), in the London Borough of Croydon, owned by Arqiva. It was established in 1955 and initially used a s ...
two miles away had been built some months earlier to broadcast
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
. When
UHF transmissions started in 1964, first the new BBC2 and later both BBC 1 and ITV (Rediffusion weekdays and ATV London at weekends) were transmitted from Crystal Palace. Thames Television began in 1968 along with London Weekend which became London Weekend Television (LWT) in 1978. 405-line VHF television was discontinued at the start of 1985, and from then onwards all television broadcasts from Crystal Palace were only on UHF.
Crystal Palace did not transmit analogue
Channel 5: this (alone) came from Croydon. Croydon had reserve transmitters for ITV and
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...
, used in the event of a fault or maintenance at Crystal Palace. The BBC decided that a complete reserve was also a good idea and all four services became available from Croydon if required.
The station carried the London regions of
BBC ONE
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
,
BBC TWO
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
,
ITV1
ITV1 (formerly known as ITV) is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the British media company ITV plc. It provides the Channel 3 public broadcast service across all of the United Kingdom except for t ...
and Channel 4 in analogue, each with an
effective radiated power
Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would hav ...
of 1 MW, before the digital switchover took place during April 2012, as well as all six
digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...
multiplexes. These had an ERP of 20 kW before switchover and 200 kW after, with considerable
beam tilt
Beam tilt is used in radio to aim the main lobe of the vertical plane radiation pattern of an antenna below (or above) the horizontal plane.
The simplest way is mechanical beam tilt, where the antenna is physically mounted in such a manner a ...
to the south and east. With digital switchover completed all services come from Crystal Palace again, but because of the site's importance Croydon will be able to duplicate the PSB multiplexes in case of emergency. Although
DTT requires far less power to achieve the same coverage as analogue TV, this 17
dB difference is too large to ensure comparable coverage. The station therefore has a range of about for DTT, compared with about for analogue.
Radio
It is also used for
FM radio transmission of local radio stations
BBC Radio London
BBC Radio London is the Local BBC Radio, BBC's local radio station serving Greater London and its surrounding areas. The station broadcasts across the area and beyond, on the 94.9 FM broadcasting, FM frequency, Digital Audio Broadcasting, DAB, ...
,
Radio X,
Capital Xtra
Capital XTRA (formerly Choice FM) is a Global Media & Entertainment, Global-owned radio station that broadcasts on 96.9 FM broadcasting, FM and 107.1 FM in Greater London. Nationally, it is heard on Digital Audio Broadcasting, DAB Digital Ra ...
and
Absolute Radio
Absolute Radio is a British National radio station owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Absolute Radio Network. It broadcasts nationally across the UK via Digital audio broadcasting and on 1215 kHz MW.
History
1993–1997: Virg ...
, and a low-powered relay of the four BBC national FM services -
Radio 1 Radio 1 or Radio One most commonly refers to:
*BBC Radio 1, a music radio station from the BBC
** BBC Radio 1Xtra, a digital radio station broadcasting black music
*CBC Radio One, a talk radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporatio ...
,
Radio 2,
Radio 3 and
Radio 4, and
Classic FM. It also has
medium wave
Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...
transmitters on 558
kHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...
(
Panjab Radio), 720 kHz (
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
) and 1035 kHz (
Kismat Radio
Kismat Radio was a radio station broadcasting from the Crystal Palace Transmitter in south-east London.
Background
Kismat Radio was part of the Sunrise Radio Group, aimed at an audience of British Asians and South Asian expats aged 30+. Pro ...
). Since the tower is grounded, a wire aerial span close to it is used for the
MW services.
Since 1995 the tower has been one of five London transmitters for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. This was joined in 1999 by the
DAB service, and a further local DAB multiplex has since started transmitting, on behalf of the
shopping channel.
signals in the UK to a trial group of 450 London homes to test HD broadcasts by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, to assess the viability and potential problems of future nationwide HD broadcasting. On 2 December 2009 the site entered service as one of the first
transmitters in the world, carrying a variant of the BBC's Multiplex B broadcasting high-definition TV services.
were based on the use of almost all current analogue TV transmitter sites. Crystal Palace remained a key part of the network after analogue was switched off in the London area in April 2012. In July 2007 it was confirmed by Ofcom that Crystal Palace would remain an A group transmitter after DSO (digital switchover). This was partially reversed with the 700 MHz Clearance that resulted in the use of Channels 55 and 56 for digital television both outside the A Group.
...