You assume correctly. Apple has no support for AppleTV Gen 1 (beyond refunding a movie that doesn't download correctly or whatever on it). They couldn't even be bothered to offer TV show rentals (back when they had them; now no one can get them) despite the fact they were already available in the same format, etc. Apple's lack of support for even the most basic software updates (i.e. little things, bug fixes, etc.) for their older products is one of the things that gives me hesitation to buy their products in the future.
Just look at the mess that is Lion and how those that are still using Snow Leopard (either by choice or because Apple dumped all support for their hardware) are pretty much screwed and stuck with whatever bugs and missing features that are present (including the dumping of Mobile Me which is present in Snow Leopard despite it no longer existing with no support for iCloud). No Safari 6, probably no more security updates, etc. One could argue Microsoft goes to the other extreme, but that's the one thing I like about that company. XP is still plenty usable 11 years later. Snow Leopard had its last major update just over a year ago and it's pretty much abandonware at this point, as is all PPC software, etc. since they dumped Rosetta (whereas most games made in the past decade still work fine in Windows7 in an XP emulated mode)
Anyway, I don't get why anyone would want Hulu Plus (especially compared to Netflix, which is the same price with NO commercials and a lot more choices). Yeah, some of the TV shows are more up-to-date, but we're talking only two networks AND they make you PAY to watch freaking commercials to boot (and no I don't like that about cable either, but at least I have full control over my DVR to skip them) for Network TV programs (which is FREE over Antenna). It seems to me either offer the service free with commercials or give me no commercials if I have to pay for it. And THAT could very well be the next big thing. Ala Carte service with options for zero commercials at a price. After watching Netflix for shows I never got around to watching in the past, etc., I'm absolutely spoiled by the lack of commercials and pretty much CAN'T STAND live TV anymore (e.g. it's rough putting up with commercials...especially those annoying political ones...during the Olympics and since it's not LIVE anyway, I'd probably be better off recording it and watching it the next day on the DVR).
People pay for HBO, Showtime, etc. to NOT watch commercials or get their favorite movies chopped to hell (i.e. this movie has been edited for content, language, speed up to squeeze more commercials in using frame dropping techniques
and time and has been reformatted to fit someone else's screen...in other words we chopped the movie to hell and stuffed it full of freaking commercials every 5 minutes so it takes 3 hours to watch a 2 hour movie that is really only 1.2 hours long since we cut 30 minutes of the movie out and dropped every 10th frame to fit more commercials in. We edited the dialogue to protect your virgin ears and thus killed half the jokes in comedies, cut out all the racy scenes that make romantic movies any fun what-so-ever to protect your virgin eyes and then blast you with commercials to buy giant giant artery clogging bacon cheeseburgers, condoms, feminine odor products and sex toys every 5 minutes

).