Yeah, I was going to say something similar.
It seems that all too many of these devices are sold on the promise of what they might do someday, if only the software's ever finished. But, as we see with the Roku, time passes, new products get introduced, and the old products get ignored because:
A) They're too busy writing crap for the new product
B) They already got our money for the old product, so there's no financial incentive to ever make good on the promise
And what a lot of people (both vendors and customers) overlook is that what we're talking about here is a whole bundled software package on the order of creating a new operating system, all to support a $200-300 box. And they leave the software closed because they don't want their competitors building on their existing work. Only trouble is that after a couple years go by, and the vendor loses interest in further development, the customers are left with an orphaned product with unfinished/buggy software (my Rio Receiver comes to mind here).
And aside from all the technical issues, there are licensing issues. We'd all like our streamer to play DVD images (.ISOs or ripped DVDs) off our home networks. Only problem is that if a vendor does write this support into their product, there's no way they're ever going to get a license to sell real DVD playing DVD players, because the DVD alliance doesn't want people doing this.
So, we see licensed, but highly restricted player software on PCs, and we see hard-hacked home grown solutions to the problem on XBMC (and look at all the headstands they have to do to just keep from getting sued off the network), but we're probably never going to see a 100% vendor supplied solution for sale in the US, because those who sell the license simply don't EVER want this to happen.
Which is the most crazy making aspect of this whole thing. Everyone knows what they WANT it to do, and there's a fair amount of common interest (as I expressed in my AVS post). And I can't believe that the vendors are entirely ignorant to this, either. It's just that the time, money and legal hassles involved make it pretty well impossible that any of us are going to be satisfied with a 100% vendor solution any time soon.
Meaning I'm thinkin' real seriously of wandering over to MythTV land, which sucks because it's: Big, Expensive, Power Hungry, not Out-Of-Box user friendly, and who knows where I can realistically get a decent/cheap thin client that does all the stuff I wanted out of the streamer/thin client in the first place. (Yeah, I know, Roku with MythRoku, but it still leaves me with the Roku's orphanware issue.)