Home printing from internet sources

Internet-based printing to a home printer in which the print job is pre-rasterized at the cable head end and sent in rasterized format to the set top box. Because the print job is pre-rasterized at the cable head end, and not at the set top box, resources are not wasted at the set top box when they are more readily available at the cable head end. In addition, because of the high speed communication network already in existence between the cable head end and the set top box, even large pre-rasterized print jobs can be transmitted to the set top box in reasonable amounts of time, meaning more quickly than a situation in which it was the set top box that performed rasterization. Both unicast and multicast printing are accomplished from an internet-based source to a cable head end connected to the internet, with the cable head end transmitting the print job via a digital cable network to subscriber set top boxes. Notification of print status is provided from the set top box back to the cable head end, thereby allowing the cable head end to provide notification of successful printout back to the remote internet site.