This wireless microphone kit from Sony is illegal. It's illegal to sell,
it's illegal to use, depending on how you use it. But it didn't always used to be this way. Now,
it's not as dramatic as I'm making it sound, but it all comes down to the
frequencies this uses. So I bought it back in around 2012, so ten years ago.
And at the time it was fine. And it was expensive too, it was like 600 bucks.
You see, it came with two different transmitters. This one is, you plug a
lavalier microphone into it and then put this on your belt or whatever. And this one you would
plug into the bottom of a microphone, and then it would transmit to the receiver right here.
So this would go near the camera. And of course being wireless, of course it has to use certain
radio frequencies. This one in particular was the 42 to 45 UHF channel option. There was actually
another option for I believe 30 to 33, which I didn't go with. Not that it usually matters,
but in this case I chose poorly. Because it turns out in 2017 the FCC decided to auction
off a certain amount of the wireless spectrum that was unlicensed at the time.
So which meant that you could sell devices that anyone could
use without a license such as this for like wireless video work or whatever,
and they decided to auction it off and actually sell it to wireless carriers, so for cell phones
and stuff. And what they auctioned off was pretty much all of the 600 Megahertz band.
So 600 to 700 Megahertz. And wouldn't you know, what does this one broadcast
on? Well, 638.125 to 661.875 MHz. So this is in that range
that got auctioned off and reallocated. So I can not actually use this on the bands
that were auctioned off. However, there was one small section of the band
there was an exception that was not, and that was called the
Duplex Gap. Which is also being used as a "guard band" between
the two that were auctioned off. So that is still actually able to be used. And fortunately,
there are a couple channels in here that is within that still-usable range. So this isn't
completely useless, but I have to be sure to actually use this within that specific range.
So I actually even marked it off on the back of these so I can remember. So the actual little
portions that weren't auctioned off were the 653 to 657 Megahertz range. But that's only
if you have a license to use that area. And for unlicensed use, which is what I would use
would be from 657 to 663. And remember that I said this one is from 638 to 661.
So at the very top end of what this is capable of,
is within that allowed range still. So as I flip through the different channel options,
there are only a handful that are actually within this range that I could use. There is five of
them. The 657.375, 658.75 and I'll just list the other ones. But for all the rest, if I were to set
the transmitter to those frequencies and started using it, then that would be breaking the law
technically. I say technically because unless you are really egregious about
using these frequencies, the chances of getting caught are kind of low. And at first they, the
FCC is who regulates these, would probably first warn you say, "hey, stop doing this" and then
eventually fine you. Although I do believe that T-Mobile, who did buy the license for
part of the band, I think they can actually technically sue you
for using what they bought a license to and I think they have in the past.
But surprisingly, the threat of lawsuit and a fine is probably not even the biggest reason why you
wouldn't want to use those channels now. The main one would be that you're probably going to get
a ton of interference and make those channels useless anyway. Because if you think about it,
if those channels are now being used for cell towers and cell phones,
well, there are cell towers and cell phones all over the place.
The whole point is to have coverage of pretty much everywhere, so everyone in that range can get cell
coverage. Which means that no matter where you are pretty much, you're going to get interference from
those cell towers, effectively making them useless anyway. Unless you're in like a pretty rural area,
but I believe even still those, frequencies are also being used, at least in some cases,
maybe not for also emergency services like fire departments, dispatch, stuff like that. And those
transmitters are going to be way stronger and over power yours anyway. So no matter how you look at
it, you're going to get a ton of interference if you're not using specifically allocated
channels that you're allowed to, because there's going to be other stuff on those.
That's the whole point of them being licensed for those other things. And actually you can
see this in real time. If I flip through my receiver for the different channels,
and this is not a problem because it's just receiving, it's not sending anything,
you can see that it will actually show on certain channels that
it has stuff coming through. The little wireless icon means that there's signal coming in.
So that means if I were to try and use this, there would be a ton of interference from
whatever this is. Unfortunately though, another problem is because there are so
few unlicensed frequencies left in that 600 Megahertz range, it's much more likely that
someone else is going to be using them as well or another company doing wireless work.
You're probably going to be more likely to interact with, and have not a clean
channel. And really the only solution is to well, buy a different unit that is newer
with different frequencies. And also, I believe from my understanding, is that
it's actually illegal to sell these now because from what I've read, the licensing
or acceptance or approval, whatever you want to call it for these devices was revoked I guess,
because, you know, every device that produces wireless signal has to be approved by the FCC,
I guess however it works. And obviously when this rule changed,
this would have changed as well. So I believe if I were to sell it, I don't know if it applies to
civilians or just companies, like if I were to sell it to another person on eBay or something,
I think it would be technically illegal, but who's going to enforce that?
Not that I plan to do that anyway. But interestingly, for a time before the rule actually
fully went into effect, there was a transition period between April 2017 and July 2020 where
you could still sell these. But with a disclaimer that said "Hey, these are going to be obsolete in
just a few years, just so you know". Now a lot of companies actually for a while offered a discount
if you had one of these older units. They would give you like a pretty
decent discount, not huge on a new unit if you were to upgrade,
although I didn't take advantage of that because I didn't use this too often anyway,
and it would have been still expensive. So at this point, this is pretty much just kind of a novelty.
There's not much more to say about it.
It's something that technically is illegal. So I can say I have, I don't think contraband,
it's not illegal to possess it's just illegal to use in certain frequencies,
which it is capable of, but not if you use it in others. Speaking of microphones though, if
you guys enjoyed this video, definitely check out my most recent video where I talked about a $2500
ultrasonic microphone that I tested different ultrasonic devices on to basically see what
these ultrasonic sounds would sound like to a cat or dog to humans if we could hear them.
So it's actually pretty interesting, and I'll put that link right there. In any case,
though, thanks so much for watching, guys. I'll see you in the next one.