Ive never seen "HD Ready" refer to 720. As I remember it, HD Ready meant that the TV was HD (720 or 1080), but it didnt include an ATSC or QAM tuner. It was more like a monitor than a true TV.

The distinction I've seen with 1080p is calling it True or Full HD.

Maybe this is specific per country, but in the Netherlands 'HD Ready' always referred to 720 instead of 1080.

Actually, it referred to 768, as that was the number of lines that the cheap panels had. Which meant that even to display 720p content you had to scale it.

There really needs to be an international standard for these terms. What's wrong with listing a display by its capabilities? 1920x1080 60hz 24bpp. That way we can get rid of all this HD, HD Ready, UHD, 4K nonsense. It's marketing speak only meant to confuse you into buying something you wouldn't have if you were better informed.

Listing by megapixels would make me happy. The number of diagonal inches has been the least helpful indicator of screen quality over the last decade, and the WUXGA nonsense is too hard to keep track of as well. Adopting a MP number would do more to get us high res screens than any other change.