I have a Logitech Squeezebox Touch (in my HiFi graveyard). For the Logitech Touch to play from my NAS it has to have a LMS server installed on my PC (the PC is doing the scanning and storing the DB) so that was a bad example of the hardware requirement. Belive me when I say, among other things, it is a hardware limitation .
I fully agree with you that there is a limitation in the developer and design resources or else the problems wouldnât have excisted.