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Vesta Clemmons, who is 77 and lives alone, relies on the battered Zenith television in her tiny apartment here as more than just a lifeline to the outside world. “It’s like a friend,” she said in her living room, which is also her dining room and bedroom. ”I would feel very isolated without it. I get lonesome anyway.”

So Ms. Clemmons was concerned to learn from a public-service campaign that after Feb. 17 the rooftop antenna connected to her television would no longer function properly, and thus neither would her TV – unless she bought and installed an adaptor. On that day the country’s broadcast stations have long been scheduled to shut down the old-fashioned, analog signals that have carried their programming since the days of Milton Berle, and replace them with high-definition digital signals that offer a clearer picture, among other benefits reports the New York Times.

But less than a month before the Feb. 17 deadline, so many American households have yet to take the necessary steps to continue to watch over-the-air television – more than 6.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research – that Congress has considered giving them more time.

On Monday night the Senate passed a bill, supported by President Obama, that would extend the deadline until June 12. The House of Representatives took up the same measure on Wednesday but failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass on a fast-track procedural vote. Its fate is now unclear.

Regardless of when the switchover takes place, viewers with cable or satellite systems, and many others with digital televisions purchased after 2004, need not do anything in anticipation of the deadline, nor will they notice much of a change afterward. But for those older and low-income viewers like Ms. Clemmons who still use set-top rabbit ears or rooftop antennas to pull in images of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or “The Young and the Restless,” the switchover to digital television has often proven a bewildering and cumbersome burden.

Read more here: Digital TV Beckons, but Many Miss the Call