Italian magazine “Backstage” (Tecniche Nuove Editor, Milano) is publishing in April 2011 a long and interesting interview with Norbert Hilbich of Sennheiser electronic, Germany. April 2011
His replies are concerned with European digital television and potential issues arousing towards radio-microphones and wireless devices in general. What follows is a kind and brief excerpt of that interview.
The starting point is the saturation of the radio spectrum especially in urban centres the wireless environment is pretty packed. This makes it difficult to find remaining gaps in the spectrum for high quality interference free productions of content for TV shows, etc.
Though the European landscape is rather different and in some countries certain spectrum can be gained by the digitalization of the terrestrial TV production and other services.
But the desired gain of the spectrum is not always given as with the digitalization more programs went on air. Besides that the introduction of HDTV needs more capacity again.
But, large scale events, such like all kind national and international sport events need
already a frequency coordinator to find reliable gaps for interference free productions.
The sell of the Digital Dividend (spectrum 790 – 862 MHz) to other users will make it
more difficult for high quality interference free productions in the remaining spectrum
470 – 790 MHz which is shared with terrestrial TV distribution. These other users do
not allow the parallel use of their spectrum (790 – 862 MHz) with wireless
microphones.
Sennheiser products and some of the competitors as well have frequency scanning facilities integrated in their products. These will allow finding free gaps in the spectrum to operate the wireless links. This can be used for single wireless links and also for small size multichannel set-up.
The study of the German Network Agency has shown that wireless mics and in-ear
monitor systems need for the daily productions in a centre like Berlin about 100MHz
of free spectrum. This spectrum is for daily productions that happen everyday
everywhere.
Special events need more usable spectrum: sports championships, Olympic games,
international soccer competitions, international political meetings etc. These events of
national interest take almost any free space for the operation of wireless mics.
The difference in the frequency use between the US and Europe in general has
historical/political reasons – the spectrum has a different organization, but similar set-
up due to physical reasons like wave propagation etc.
In Europe a certain harmonisation can be seen despite the fact there are still various
national differences. The European government is the driving force behind a general
harmonisation within the European Community and tries to coordinate future
activities. Background of the coordination is easier cross border operation of several
services as well as the economies of scale.
In Italy though some products by Sennheiser can simply be used, since the National Plan for Frequency Division is assigning the spectrum from 1785 to 1800 MHz to the Ministry of Defence for their fixed and mobile communication services. So not all wireless device available throughout Europe will be usable in Italy because of this stringent limitation.
Therefore the Italian Sennheiser distributor Exhibo SpA has officially issued a note in which specifies some of the products launched at ProLight+Sound 2011 will not be distributed on the Italian territory, nor any evolution series radio-mike operating on frequencies between 1785 to 1800 MHhz will be accepted in the service dep because its use is against Italian law.
