Receiving S4C and Radio Cymru outside Wales in the UK

Around here the signal for Radio Cymru reaches as far east as Stafford.

I live in Warwick, radio cymru on fm works in the car if itā€™s good weather. Itā€™s pretty solid from Brum and westwards and the channel ID comes up too. Does that mean that the m5 \ m6 is roughly the reliable radio cymru border from Taunton up to Warrington? Itā€™s worth trying the Cardiff signal as thatā€™s pretty strong although I notice that as you go up into the Cotswolds eg around stow, the signal flips from 96.8 to 104 something

listening to cymruFM here in Hobart Tasmania!

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I can get Radio Cymru on the car FM outside my front door here in Belper, Derbyshire www.derbywelshlearnerscircle.blogspot.com

Diolch yn fawr, Gav! And thanks to everyone else for their input. CymruFM is a great resource, isnā€™t it? Iā€™m hoping that Radio Beca, the community station for Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire will broadcast on the web as well - but Iā€™m not a sure what their plans are.

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Fine reception here on the lonesome Cheshire plain as far as Macc. It holds up on the car radio east of Stockport. It drops off beyond Lask Edge but everything does :). I was hoping weā€™d get some S4C reception on Freeview in E Cheshire but nothing doing. Iā€™ll send Mrs Shak up on the roof again to sort the aerial out

Iā€™m really annoyed I still canā€™t get S4C on Free view., yet there must be more Welsh speakers in London then anywhere else including Wales itself. I live in a Conservation area and therefore a dish is frowned upon.Maybe I need a new computer as my reception there is problematic.

I donā€™t pretend to understand much about the technology involved, but I guess Freeview still depends on there being transmitters which carry the particular channel in the area in which reception will be available. I suppose S4C has only ever been promoted as a channel for Wales and it would be hard to make the case for transmitters outside Wales, at least on the face of it. I can only think that an internet-based solution is the best answer.

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Unfortunately, S4C on freeview will only ever be available in Wales. Some parts of South Wales are receiving TV signals from Somerset because geographic obstacles prevent them from getting a decent picture from their nearest Welsh transmitter, yet they still donā€™t offer S4C from these transmitters either, nor do they offer regional programming for Wales - only BBC West and ITV Westcountry.
If you have a cable network in your area, then you can get S4C through Virgin on channel 166. And of course thereā€™s the Internet. Live streaming is available on S4C Clic (but will not broadcast adverts that would otherwise be shown on live TV), TVCatchup and TVPlayer (which both will broadcast with adverts as with the live broadcasts). Otherwise, satellite will be the only option you have.

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BBC iPlayer, too - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/s4c

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ā€¦ah yes, this too!! (Just like S4C Clic, adverts are removed from the live broadcasts, replaced with a ā€œMwy o rhaglenni wediā€™r egwyl/Programmes will continue after the breakā€ message between programming instead).

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Yes. I think itā€™s exactly the same feed, though marginally better picture quality in my experience.

Of course, the vast majority of the commercials are in English, so itā€™s no great loss. :wink:

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A slightly off-topic question, but i suspect kindly techy people may be lurking around
I recently purchased a DAB radio to use in the kitchen.
Is it normal for Radio Cymru to be sporadically unavailable on DAB (this is in Cardiff)? Sometimes itā€™s fine, sometimes I have to re-tune to FM, which has better sound anyway! The point is that I donā€™t seem to have any issues with any other station.

This does tend to happen with other DAB stations as well unfortunately. It can be as simple as repositioning your aerial (depending on what type of aerial youā€™re using), repositioning the radio itself, or to keeping certain devices away from your radio when it is in use.
For example, I listen to Radio X on DAB, usually in the mornings. My aerial is of the wire type which I have fixed to the wall behind a picture canvas (a blown-up photo I took of the sunset in Tresaith I might add!), but sometimes my laptop interferes with its signal. Itā€™s then I may switch over to internet radio or another station. I do also have this problem with receiving Radio Cymru, but not as often.
If you can use different antennae with your radio, experiment with them and stick with the best one. If not, then read the instructions for recommended positioning of your aerial so to get the best reception you can from your radio.

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Thanks for this.
This is only a little kitchen radio, it just has the telescopic aerial on the top, which seems to make little difference. My main radio, has never experienced such strong signals (the poor dear grew up in Mid Wales, where very precise arrangement of long antenna and sacrifices made to the appropriate gods were required to get a reasonable signal. So I donā€™t think itā€™s a signal issue, however I am in a flat, there are lots of electronics fairly near by, including WI-Fis from above and below, is it just an interference issue. Would periodic resetting of the radio help?

I think with some DAB radios periodic retuning is required anyways - like Freeview does now and again. The one I use in my bedroom Iā€™ve often needed to retune, yet the main system in my living room Iā€™ve hardly ever needed to retune - so I guess itā€™s also down to the make as well, or what technology it has built into it (perhaps they retune themselves when it recognises a frequency change for certain stations? If they havenā€™t invented such technology I might just patent the idea myself!! :wink:)

I cannot aspire to receiving Radio Cymru by any method except Sky! I cannot even receive Radio Scotland in my bedroom. The transmitter we used to receive went digital, I think, but the terrain makes it impossible to pick up! I checked on line and got ā€˜not availableā€™! Mid-Argyll has much in common with certain parts of Wales! I am fighting daily to pick up Radio 4 to wake me in the morning. Thatā€™s not digital yet, but my radio alarm needs to be just so, the aerial exactly right and the tuning tweeked! If anyone has hints for keeping it set right, grateful reception is guaranteed!

My reception problems are in the car where I donā€™t have wi-fi or a DAB radio. I travel up the heads of the valleys each day and Radio Cymru reception drifts in and out. When I lose the Radio Cymru signal my radio automatically finds Radio Wales and I then have to listen to Radio Wales for a bit before starting a search again for a Radio Cymru signal. The question I have is why is the Radio Cymru signal so weak in many parts of Wales (around Merthyr is awful), while the Radio Wales signal and just about everything else is always good?

Maybe you need to ask BBC?? I cannot help suspecting that someone somewhere thinks, ā€œThereā€™s no call the Welsh Language station in the Valleys!ā€ But I could easily be wrong. A lot has changed since I travelled that route! A valleys girl, learning Welsh, is Leader of Plaid Cymru!!! :sunny:

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Conversely, in my notoriously English-speaking part of Wales, the Radio Cymru signal is great, but we have no Radio Wales FM signal whatsoever. I know Radio Wales has a bad reputation in some quarters for its coverage of Wales news, but itā€™s better than nothing; better than getting your news from stations over the border that often forget (for example) that their big NHS breaking story of the day applies only to England.

I think I have told this story before, but on my drive to and from work every day I pass through Llangurig where for maybe half a mile, Radio Cymru drifts out and Raidio na Gaeltachta drifts in from Ireland.

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