If you read my TiVo book, you may remember a story I told about a discussion I had with a TV exec at NATPE a few years back about the future of advertising in a DVR world. He said that future TVs might have printers built into them that would spit out ad coupons if you skipped over the commercials. Silly Suits.
But that doesn’t mean that somebody hasn’t done it (at least the built-in printer part)! Epson has just entered the already overcrowded HDTV market, and their rear-projection 57″ monstrosity, called the LivingStation, has a color printer built into it. It doesn’t crap out ad coupons (yet) and no, you can’t print out a hard copy of the last episode of “Lost.” So far, the printer’s only designed to make prints of your photo libraries that can be displayed on the set. ExtremeTech offers a fairly in-depth review of the “LivingStation” (catheter and feeding tube not included) here.