What's up with Apple TV?

This year is heavy with Apple news, so the silence about Apple TV is somewhat suspicious and triggers comments like http://www.switched.com/2007/11/27/is-there-hope-for-the-apple-tv/. Not surprisingly Apple TV is painted here as a device only for "die-hard Apple fanatics" without future on the mass-market.
That would be sad, because Apple TV is a good and easy solution, if you don't want to listen to music and watch movies sitting at your desk in front of your computer, but on the sofa in your living room. Yes, Apple TV is restricted to the iTunes world, but that's a pretty big world. I buy video on iTunes and can rip DVDs - what else is missing? Apple TV is by far not flawless and I'm a little disappointed that we haven't seen a software update, for example bringing Internet radio and improved handling of slideshows, but still we have lots of fun with it.
And as far as using a Mac mini instead: did anybody actually do this? I tried and sank a couple of hundred dollars (on top of the mini itself) into it, but I just couldn't come to a satisfying solution. First even with a DVI-to-HDMI cable the picture on the TV was either too small or too big. Then - as opposed to Apple TV - the Mac mini cannot be used just with the remote. It needs a keyboard and a mouse, preferably with Bluetooth, which just don't seem right in a living room. And Frontrow would happily burn the iTunes logo in our plasma screen.
No, I think that Apple TV is still a great idea and I hope that Apple neglected it just because so many other things were going on this year.