To add to the first response, HDTV has a built-in HD tuner. At minimum, this would be an "over-the-air" ATSC broadcast tuner. It may, or may not include a Cable QAM tuner. But even then, a cable QAM tuner is not really sufficient. A cable capable HDTV will also have at least one CableCard slot which will support a CableCard from your cable company. The purpose of the CableCard is to decode encrypted channels as well as provide mappings of physical channels (say 103.2) to logical channels (705).
An HDTV-ready TV is one which has no built-in tuner or only has an NTSC (plain old television) tuner.
While it is nice to have built-in tuners, if you have DVR such as the upcoming Series 3 TiVo, a Cable HD DVR, or a satellite DVR, the need for built-in tuners is almost nonexistant.
What is important is that any new HDTV (ready or not) that you consider have an HDMI interface. Or, better yet, it should have two HDMI interfaces.
HDMI interfaces are digital video and audio direct connects between a set-top box, DVR, or soon to be released HD disk player (Blu-ray or HD-DVD). HDMI includes a copy protection scheme called HDCP. In the worst case scenario, some of the copyright owners (studios) may enforce copy protection via HDCP for full HD. If the HDTV does not have an HDMI connection to the source box, a lower resolution (not HD) version of the signal will be sent over the connection.
The reason I recommend two HDMI inputs is that people will likely have two different connections in the future: set-top/DVR AND an HD disk player.