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In the 70s and 80s most sets antenna inputs were spade terminals. This was true even when some sets in the 70s had solid state digital tuning. My original take on "cable ready" has always been that when sets started coming with the socket to accept coaxial cable mounted on the back, then they were cable ready.
I think this vagueness sold a lot of sets and retired a lot of otherwise perfectly usable sets because people thought that you needed a "cable ready" set in order to hook up to cable. All you needed was one of the handy little RF transformers hooked to your spade connector screws and you would have been "cable ready."
ANY set will hook to cable and now there are no tuning limitations within the set its self as that is all dictated by the provider and sent thought their box sitting on your set. NOW, I do believe that the really modern sets can somehow work without the box, but normally there was an identification card with the cable/satellite boxes. I'm sure that there is some digital magic to take care of that problem though. Anyway, I hope that this explains some of your question.
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