So here is where your 600MHz wireless mic spectrum has disappeared to...

And what exactly is Sprint doing with the 1.9-2Ghz BAS spectrum that they just had to have? Nothing! the 600mhz range should be decent for phones, but data rates may be compromised in the end.

BTW, what is the 700mhz EMS doing in other areas? Ours is completely unused yet I still needed to take down my wireless intercom all those years ago.

I hope T-mobile actually puts their purchase to use.

I will say that I've had an early 2.4Ghz system made by Sabine... It worked but we had to go to alternate spectrum at the bottom of the normal 2.4Ghz (which might have been quasi-legal). The building our studio is in is completely saturated with 2.4ghz wifi, every single channel is used on campus (several times over).

But as you say, overall we are pretty much in trouble and it keeps costing us money because the new owners are not required to buy us out like the Sprint BAS purchase all those years ago. The local TV stations all got brand new gear and much of it was free (depended on how old the gear was), all on Sprint's dime.
 
Ooh. I am assuming that will destroy the available bandwidth in that spectrum for those hoping to hang onto their now illegal tr/rx systems.

I am fully on the A band (block 470, 19, 20) Lectro stuff. Hopefully, I can continue to function long enough to pay off the equipment before I am forced into VHF or something.
 
Bottom line: ditch the wireless. Forget it. Use a talent-mounted recorder that has two tracks, one a safely track 6-12 db lower. Do a sound check. Tape the lav in a hidden place, make sure there is no clothes rustle.

This is the way it will go. And cheaper, too. Save the radio frequencies for your walkie-talkie.
 
scottfs said:
Bottom line: ditch the wireless. Forget it. Use a talent-mounted recorder that has two tracks, one a safely track 6-12 db lower. Do a sound check. Tape the lav in a hidden place, make sure there is no clothes rustle.

This is the way it will go. And cheaper, too. Save the radio frequencies for your walkie-talkie.
Click to expand...


Great idea! We will just cancel all live production! Don't think so small in the terms of who this hurts.
 
scottfs said:
This is the way it will go.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. Way too expensive. Hollywood isn't going to have this. Recording audio without monitoring is like recording video without looking at the viewfinder. Sane people can't work this way.

But let's assume you're right, this is the way it's going to be. So you do the best setup you can, turn it on and hope for the best. After the day's shooting you transfer the files to your audio post house. They complain about noise you didn't hear during your setup, or a corrupt file, or levels unacceptably too low, or...whatever. A whole day's shooting is lost. Your project either has to reshoot it all, or ADR it all. Who's going to pay for that? And who in the future is going to hire the audio guy who let it happen on his watch? A whole lot of dialog recording teams will be one-and-done if they can't monitor audio while it's being recorded.
 
scottfs said:
Bottom line: ditch the wireless. Forget it. Use a talent-mounted recorder that has two tracks, one a safely track 6-12 db lower. Do a sound check. Tape the lav in a hidden place, make sure there is no clothes rustle.

This is the way it will go. And cheaper, too. Save the radio frequencies for your walkie-talkie.
Click to expand...

Don't think that'll work for 99% of what I do(network). Even when we multi-track, they rarely use anything except the audio laid down to the camera.
 
hscully said:
Are any of the manufacturers offering modifications?
Click to expand...

Lectro has been doing block swaps for years. But it gets pricey if you're changing out a lot of Tx's and Rx's. That being said, I'm probably gonna sell my cam-hops(block 26) while I can still get some money out of them, as opposed to re-blocking them, and switch to the new "multi-block" units.
 
We are the little fish in the big ocean. We're carried by the tides and surge, we have to dodge the bigger fish who have fat wallets and an ocean that doesn't give a crap about us. Imagine the lobbyist power and dollars, the payoffs and influence that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have in Washington. Compare that to us, who do we have, the wireless users association is Sisky Falls, Iowa with two people? Money and power make the world go around and in this area, we have none.
 
If the industry organized, we have something more powerful than money... The ability to communicate an idea in a very widespread way, and do it with style. But it would take all of media to push this through and require investigative reporting on the "donations" made by the bigger companies.
 
Bruce Watson said:
I don't think so. Way too expensive. Hollywood isn't going to have this. Recording audio without monitoring is like recording video without looking at the viewfinder. Sane people can't work this way.

But let's assume you're right, this is the way it's going to be. So you do the best setup you can, turn it on and hope for the best. After the day's shooting you transfer the files to your audio post house. They complain about noise you didn't hear during your setup, or a corrupt file, or levels unacceptably too low, or...whatever. A whole day's shooting is lost. Your project either has to reshoot it all, or ADR it all. Who's going to pay for that? And who in the future is going to hire the audio guy who let it happen on his watch? A whole lot of dialog recording teams will be one-and-done if they can't monitor audio while it's being recorded.
Click to expand...

And to think that once upon a time a whole film industry - everywhere in the world - existed without any wireless, heck, without lavs even, at all. Somehow they've managed to make masterpieces we study to this day. Just kidding :)

Yep, sound used to be pretty atrocious back in the day. You'd think audiences could never go back to such dire standards, since we all grew up on much better sound than they managed to get back in the day. Yeah, you'd think that. And then I remember how people accepted sh|tty mp3 quality audio in music and these terrible little headphones, and how the dynamic range of recordings got compressed and how in so many ways people nowadays are willing to accept and be fine with - sometimes even prefer! - much worse audiophile solutions and music listening technology. And if you think that's limited to audio, think again - we've seen the same decline in people willing to watch really poorly made amateur video in TV news and other live type shows, and how people are willing to watch movies on tiny phone screens, and guess what... I'm pretty sure people would accept ADR on a whole movie, and guess what, it will be cheaper than shooting with live sound recording. Want proof of that - just live a bit in other parts of the world, and I don't mean third world, I mean Europe... ADR and badly lipsynced dialogue are so commonplace that nobody bats an eye, not to mention such "unacceptables" to American audiences as subtitles and even loud-reading of dialogue.

Bottom line, if worst comes to worst, and there is no more wireless, there will be other solutions, and other ways of doing production that will get around some problems, and for those that you can't get around, people will accept lower standards, as they have about pretty much anything, including housing, food, and... well I'm not gonna get political here, but people will accept anything I tell you, anything.

That said, sticking blind lav recorders on people is still leagues better than what the film industry had access to not so long ago - 50's, 60's and even later. Sux, but this is not armageddon. The industry will survive. There are bigger challenges ahead, and technology in general is developing to make things cheaper and better and more capable. I wouldn't sweat it - but then again, I don't work sound in film :)...
 
Looks like 500MHz is "safe" but increasingly crowded for now. The NTIA/FCC "500 MHz Initiative" refers to how much spectrum will be freed up for wireless broadband use, not necessarily where that spectrum will come from; at least, that's how I understand it.
 
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