[quote name='Vinny']HD ready sets will be compatible with next gen systems but you won't get HD quality picture unless you get a HD tuner and connect the system(s) using the tuner.[/QUOTE]
I think you've been confused by some of the copy protection proposals.
There is a core difference between a television set and a monitor. They may both have identical characteristics for the screen and what resolutions they support. The difference is that a TV has the tuner hardware built-in to take radio frequency (RF) signals used for broadcasting and convert those into displayed images and sounds. A monitor would need an external device to perform this task. You can display broadcast TV on a PC monitor, for instance, by adding a tuner to your PC (like ATI's TV Wonder) that performs the same function as a TV's tuner but typically with some added features.
The same difference applies to HDTV vs. HD monitor. HD monitors are also referred to as 'HD Ready.' This means it can do everything except the tuning of broadcast RF signals. For those who get all of their reception via cable or satellite there is no need for a tuner since the display doesn't need to be able to distinguish from multiple sources like the common 2-13 channels of the bygone era. Most people have their cable boxes set connected to an input on their TV that leads into a tuner but is always on the same channel. The cable box puts all of its output on that channel. This is solely because not too long ago this was the only universal input. Today, just about all TVs offer direct inputs for composite or better signals and it isn't necessary for the cable box to pretend it's generating a broadcast signal. Even so, that is how most cable boxes are still setup just because the majority of customers know how to deal with that.
For supporting HD there is no longer the need to fake an RF encoding but now copy protection has become the big concern. So it is no problem for a cable box or a video game console to feed a 1080i digital stream directly to an HD monitor that has no ability to handle RF signals on its own. The complications come in when the contents owners refuse to allow their material to be shown on systems that offer an unencrypted feed to the display that could be recorded at perfect quality or at least as good as it is received. (A lot of the quality of cable signals are lost at the last stage between the decoder box and TV.)
And HD Ready monitor that understands the standard encoding for 720p and/or 1080i display modes should be able to offer those modes to the Xbox 360 and PS3 with no problems. On the PS3 side there may be some requirements for the connection used for showing Blu-ray movies but for the games there is no need to prevent people from recording the output.
