My parents have cable but they own one of the old style Time Warner cable boxes. Not the newer digital cable HD or anything fancy. When the switch happens next year are they going to have to switch to a newer digital cable box or will they be fine?

They should be fine. The digital switch-over for 2009 is strictly for over-the-air broadcasts.
The cable company will receive the broadcast signal and convert it to analog so that their old (analog set-top) boxes will still work.

Hope this relieves them.
WallyH

Cable companies aren't affected by the analog broadcasting cutoff scheduled for February 2009 in the United states. Any transition of cable service from analog to digital is part of the cable provider's voluntary decisions motivated by the ability of their equipment to carry a larger quantity of digital standard definition channels. As the cable provider shifts channels to digital format subscribers will need rental converters with digital functions or late model televisions featuring QAM format digital cable ready tuners. Subscribers wanting to utilize QAM tuners built into their televisions will usually be limited to a basic digital programming tier of local broadcast and public service channels. Some of the televisions with QAM tuners are equipped to use a device called Cable Card that many cable companies rent to subscribers wanting to subscribe to additional channels but services like pay per view and on demand programming is often not available unless an external rental converter is used (this situation may change in a few years for some TV models).

Most cable providers utilize technologies that restrict reception of many channels to subscribers that rent converters from the cable provider. Those restrictions usually apply to channels that are exclusively provided through cable and digital satellite systems and to premium channels (like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Movie Channel). Many of these providers will readily exchange a subscriber's rental analog converter(s) for a later model with digital capabilities.

Note that converters certified as eligible for the government $40 coupon program are designed to use signals from the consumer's antenna (set top or outdoor) and aren't designed to work with the signals on most cable systems.