Boxee is on Apple TV if you hack it. It did have working Hulu support in the last April 2009 build (currently Hulu isn't working for me on it, as of about 2 weeks ago - they might have broke it again, and Boxee is semi-slow at releasing updates for their Apple TV build).
The interface is a bit clunky (due to an underpowered Apple TV). It works and it does give you this "Oh, that's cool!" feeling, but it's not quite there yet. If the interface was sped up more (especially when you're navigating the menu's while a video is playing in the background), I'd love it. Comedy Central and TED video's stream wonderfully! :)
Out of the box though, Apple TV is nearly useless unless you buy lots of content off of iTunes for it.
Interesting note, it does NOT require an Intel processor. The site went live with that in the requirements copy, but in truth it's just a suggested minimum in terms of processing power.
I and @hulusupport hashed this out via twitter today and the copy should be changed to reflect this soon.
What an enormous waste -- why bother distributing a desktop app if you're going to stick with Flash? Taking the browser out of the mix doesn't solve anything except direct access to a remote control.
The video rendering would be a full order of magnitude more efficient if it wasn't blitted through Adobe's craptacular runtime firs, all just to get some measly overlays.
I would think reliable playback trumps using a remote control. Nothing ruins my video experiences more than stuttering playback. If you told me I would never get a remote control in exchange for consistently buttery framerates, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
It'll be interesting to see how this works. As a user I'm a fan of thick clients, but it's an unanswered question whether and when thick clients are a valuable companion product for a web app. This is another data point to that question.
(I guess Twitter is another example of a place where thick clients have a clear place alongside the standard web thin client, but that's somewhat different in that these thick clients are, if I'm not mistaken, produced by third parties rather than Twitter.)
Not to mention the fact that it runs independently from your browser tab. I know that Chrome already has separate processes for each tab but no other browser has that yet and sandboxing a video player in its own application is great for stability.
Not enough Restrictions Management in the <video> tag, so this won't happen. Clearly, without DRM, I am going to pirate low-rez Hulu feeds instead of the un-DRM'd over-the-air HDTV stream. Right...
