Huw, I share your concern. I have never wanted a computer in my living room, I work with the damn things all day, my living room contains art, not gear. And I don't want a typical computer interface -- JRiver is an exemplar of a great Windows 95 design, but Windows 95 was 20 years ago. And I do like boxes that just work. Meridian Sooloos does that well, and even there we are subject to the vagaries of networking.

But given that, Roon is interesting:
1. It builds on the great metadata model which allows serendipitous discovery and relationship navigation, not surprising of course since it is the same team.
2. The user interface is modern
3. Sound quality is good because it uses the standard Meridian end points
4. If the core and store are in a separate room, they don't have to be as pretty as Meridian gear.
5. There is hope that the computer complexities can be hidden. It will be challenging to achieve "consumer electronics reliability" in an open system. Roon is certainly not ready yet. But we have learned some things, it is not unreasonable to hope.

In the meantime, I keep both systems hooked up.

Music room: 818v3, DSP8000SE, Roon/Intel NUC, microRendu/LPS-1 into Geek Pulse Xfi into Audeze LCD-3
HT: G61R, HD621, MS600, Oppo, Avantgarde Solo
Library: MS600, Bel Canto, Mark & Daniel
Other: SonicOrbiter, GeekOut, Audeze EL-8