In the United States, the Senate has passed a bill on December 2005 that would mandate all analog broadcasts by free to air television networks to stop and cease analog signal transmission by February 17, 2009.

The US Senate bill means that after February 17, 2009, the conventional and widely used analog TV sets in the country will be obsolete and useless.

Why? Because these TV sets would not be able to receive signal transmissions anymore. Thus, the lower-income TV viewers would have to be deprived of TV entertainment.

But, the US Senate also approved a resolution that would make the federal government subsidize the average-income consumers’ use of converter boxes to enable them to watch the proposed, improved, better and new digital broadcasts from their favorite TV network still using their analog TVs.
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