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Over the air converter boxes usually have a zoom setting to get either letterbox (black on top and bottom) or cropped to 4x3. If you use the 4x3 option going into a 16x9 flat panel, you see stretched, but that was not your question.
On cable systems, there are sets that will receive the QAM digital signal if it's in the clear, but usually it isn't, and requires a set with a Cablecard interface and a descrambling card supplied by the cable company.
The original idea of Cablecard is that it could be owned by and installed by the consumer, and portable from one cable system to another. I don't think the portable part ever worked, requiring different cards for different systems. Cable companies have dragged their feet on Cablecard availability, requiring their technician to plug it in, etc., to the point where receiver makers have given up on designing the interface into all sets.
The future appears (maybe) to be a simpler cable interface box that converts to Ethernet combined with a TV with an Ethernet port.
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