said by gaforces :

Fearmongering, what a quaint strategy.

The real reason is the studios are afraid that people will be able to use the devices to access their premium content like ... NASCAR Total Access where they charge 10 bucks a month or whatever to be able to get different viewing angles and access to the in car cameras. And lots of SPAM.

So basically they want the spectrum, and anyone else who wants to utilize it is unwelcome competition.

said by n2jtx :

It sounds like interesting technology but the fact that a malfunctioning unit can wreak havoc should make this technology a non-starter. After all, even if they get a working model, who is going to guarantee with 100% certainty that none of the devices will malfunction in the hands of the public and not wipe out terrestrial TV in the geographic area around the bad device? Even a failure rate of .01% on a million-plus units is still one hundred units that could cause problems. This technology has to work flawlessly every time all the time or it will be a problem.

said by qworster :

HDTV spectrum is so poorly allotted that on the average, 25% of it is vacant ("white space"). Even in NYC, the most spectrum congested place in the entire world, the amount of white space is almost 20% As an example, there are ONLY 29 HDTV stations on channels 5 and six in the entire United States! Compare this to about 200 NTSC ones there now and you can see that vast areas of the USA will have channels 5 and 6 wide open after 2/2009!

said by cornelius785 :

i highly doubt your microphones operate in that same spectrum as these 'white space' devices would mainly based on the fact that they could never get certification from the fcc to operate in the already used TV bands. my guess it that your microphones operate in an ISM band. plus the the white space devices should be aware that some small range of frequencies is being used and should not transmit in that range.

said by RadioDoc :

Good god. You are a TV/Radio Engineer and are that clueless as to the basic physics of the technology you are using? You should know at least the basics of channel allocation, and by now should know how silly it is to continue broadcasting TV of any kind on low-VHF. Or high-VHF for that matter. ATSC TV works just fine in the UHF band and any sane broadcaster is going to implement ATSC television up there due to the smaller antenna space requirements if nothing else. Give 54-88 MHz to land mobile uses and 174-216 MHz to wireless Internet on a primary basis, but your understanding of how this all works is shockingly weak.

By the way, if it so easy to design a properly functioning "white space" device, why are they having such a hard time getting it right? I suppose the NAB is sabotaging the designs?

I've been in this business for 33 years. Some of what I do is tracking down interference to broadcast signals. I guess I should embrace this new "white space" initiative as my early retirement fund, because the way it's proposed right now I'll have more work than I can handle.