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If your cable company is switching to all-digital, then you'll have to get a cable box to tune channels. Some channels may come over the QAM, which ATSC/DTV tuners can received (inside HDTVs and some DVD recorders).
A cable box is treated like a VCR -- use s-video or composite to connect it to a DVD recorder. You have to maintain two separate timers, and manually sync them (make them match on both devices). The DVD recorder tunes to the AV input, while the cable box tunes to channels at preset times.