There are several reasons why current music servers just fail, but the biggest complaint I have is the user interface. Most are pretty horrendous, and a two-line display with perhaps ten's of thousands of songs, hundreds of playlists, genres, artists and albums can be very cumbersome if that was used to select music to play.
I do like the idea of the extra control with the remote and buttons, but what exactly will the display show? File tag information of current song, selected playlist, file format, bit rate, network IP address, etc? There's not much you can show that would be that useful here is there? I expect most will just either use the web interface or an iPod to control it.
If the key concern is folks resistance to purchasing a $200 iPod touch or to use a computer as the remote there are other "MPod" controlling devices out there. Perhaps a custom Bryston remote would be more desirable which could provide the features of the iPod touch to control the BDP-1, but also extended to control other Bryston gear.