The email blast from the head of my son and daughter's theater group relayed a frantic plea: "We need to raise $16,000 before the upcoming spring performances," Anya Wallach, the executive director of Random Farms Kids' Theater, in Westchester, New York, wrote in late May. If the money didn't materialize in time, she warned, there could be a serious problem with the shows: nobody would hear the actors.
Random Farms, and tens of thousands of other theater companies, schools, churches, broadcasters, and myriad other interests across the country, need to buy new wireless microphones. The majority of professional wireless audio gear in America is about to become obsolete, and illegal to operate. The story of how we got to this strange point involves politics, business, science, and, of course, money.
Story: https://www.wired.com/story/wireless-mics-radio-frequencies-fcc-saga/
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
Junk spectrum--
Yes, we have had innovation in that band, but the tradeoff is that the band is full of noise. So, the devices using that band have to be able to handle the interference. Some applications are OK with data loss and retransmission and the unpredictable delays that that causes, and some aren't. I'd hate to have all applications be forced to live in such an environment.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 14 2018, @09:14AM
I'm not suggesting we declare anarchy in the RF spectrum, just that we take a more balanced approach by allocating more to unlicensed use, and not just the junk nobody else wants.