I talked to our local Cable company and they told me the FCC is requiring them to offer HDTV.
Isn't that govt. forcing it?
Your local cable person is mistaken. The government is mandating a move to digital broadcast, not necessarily high-def digital broadcast.
HDTV is a (nice) subset of digital broadcast formats. Normal TV can be broadcast digitally in what's known as 480i (normal TV resolution, interlaced, 60 interlaced fields a second), which is exactly what standard TV is broadcast in now (as an analog signal). But digital TV also can bundle multiple channels' worth of bandwidth to send higher resolution content in 720p or 1080i high-def formats. Those formats are not mandatory, just possible in the new digital world.