You can find a lot of online hate for the Apple TV, like this recent confession from Aron Trimble at TUAW:

I imagine this will come as a surprise to many, but this TUAW blogger hates an Apple product. A product that could be great, could be so much better than what it is. For some unknown reason, this “hobby” is left to wither and die a slow, painful death. The real tragedy is that when Apple TV does die, I suspect Steve Jobs will never venture to create another, similar product even though the Apple TV has so much potential.

Goodbye, Apple TV: your promises were enchanting but your lies were enraging.

I don’t understand the hate. Just because it doesn’t do all a user wants is no reason to get angry. It does what it does well. If you want more, don’t buy it.

Granted, the Apple TV could be much more than it is. Apple is certainly not pushing the potential of this device. I can only assume that they view other products — iPhone and perhaps a tablet device — as higher priorities. Hopefully, one day, they’ll update the Apple TV with more offerings.

But for now, I use it to rent movies from iTunes. I’ve also hacked it with Boxee, and that opens a lot more. Add to that a library of movies that I own, and the Apple TV is a great hub for my video entertainment.

Sure, I’d love the Hulu client on there, but I use a Mac Mini attached to my TV to get that.

So stop the Apple TV hate. It may not have reached its potential, but it does what it does pretty well.

I’m a big fan of Hulu, love my AppleTV and often rent from the iTunes store. I’ve got a Netflix account whose Watch Instantly queue is filled with old movies and television shows (currently working my way through Quantum Leap). And, yes, I run Boxee on my MacBook, MacBook Pro and on my AppleTV.

Over the past few months, I’ve considered cutting my satellite provider and going with online content and basic cable from the local cable company. I’ve not made the leap, yet.

Now I’ve got another obstacle, which is news that content providers have forced Hulu to require that Boxee drop their service. You can read blog posts about it from both Boxee and Hulu. (If you are a fan of Hulu on Boxee, please comment on both blogs.)

That aside, the idea of cutting the cord and saving the money is still appealing. For a while I was using a MacMini and EyeTV as a media hub to capture news reports for a client. Using a modified set-up would give me most of what I want.

On that note, here’s a great blog post from J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly. He details how he cut his cable bill in half and still gets his favorite shows.

I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely used. “$65.82 a month isn’t a fortune,” I wrote at the time, “but it’s a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t get used. If we were big TV watchers maybe the cost could be justified. But we aren’t. And it can’t.”

To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30/month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free.

He goes on to detail how he did it. It’s worth the read.

For my part, I have to be able to record The View for my wife. With two kids — and a third on the way — she has to work in her viewing of The View. The EyeTV will accomplish that for me.