I hacked my Apple TV this past weekend and installed Boxee on it. Boxee is a media center application that runs on Mac, Linux and Windows platforms (and the Apple TV). One of the cooler features is that it integrates with Hulu, giving me access to a huge archive of current and old television shows and movies.

Gizmodo has an excellent article on how to hack your Apple TV (it’s easy to do, doesn’t void your warranty, and is easy to undo if you don’t like it). It was a little harder getting Hulu to work properly – if you aren’t located in the United States, you generally can’t watch Hulu videos … at least, not without taking a “creative approach” to the problem (hint: it helps to know someone with a US server, and how to configure OpenVPN).

Now that everything is up and running, I don’t see why I would ever bother with cable TV again. I have access to NBC, ABC and CBS television shows, tons of movies, and for Canadian content we get the CBC in high def over the air.

I’ll try and put a video overview of the system together and post it sometime in the next couple days.