Greetings Sid, The unfortunate answer to your question is no and I am sorry to say that the day of absolutely needing a cable box is drawing near.
What can still be done, I believe, is to input cable directly into a digital tuner in a brand new, or very new, TV and take the audio out to a HT receiver. There are many drawbacks to doing this but I have had many of my customers pleading with me to sacrifice the picture and sound for the sake of simplicity.