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Yeah, that is one way for the cable companies to rake in extra money. Many cable channels are delivered in scrambled QAM format; which, can't be received on any TV's internal tuner. That's why you must have a digital cable box from your cable company that will convert the incoming cable signal into something the TV will recognize.
When my Mother bought her flatscreen 2-3 years ago, our cable company was still sending out both analog and digital signals over the same line. Her TV has both NTSC and ATSC tuners built in; so, it could receive the analog cable channels. However, it would not display and of the scrambled QAM cable channels. A little over a year ago, they dropped analog delivery; thus, requiring all subscribers to obtain one of their digital converter boxes in order to continue watching TV. We had to get a box for her new TV, as well as boxes for the older CRT TV's.
I've never tried to connect a HD cable box to a non-HD TV. We don't subscribe to the HD cable service; so, I don't have a box to try. All we have are those small boxes that they call a "digital transfer adapter" (DTA). Those boxes are about as basic as they come, only having a single coax connector for the cable input and a single coax connector that provides an NTSC output to channel 3 or 4 that can be connected to the RF input of the TV. I've seen the big Motorola boxes; but, I don't think those are HD. They just allow access to more services like "pay per view", etc. I don't know what type of outputs are on the HD box; but, I'm sure it could be made to work with a non-HD set. However, that would be stupid to pay extra for the HD service and equipment if you didn't have an HD TV.
As for me, I'm perfectly happy watching old SD CRT TV's and I have no plans of upgrading to the HD cable service.
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