Hoo boy. Gonna go long on this one because there's a lot to address.
I don't know if this is a cynical business decision, or really about "vision", but either way it's a massive misstep.
Let's assume vision. That's all well and good. But your vision is not even close to universally accessible, as demonstrated by many people here. I have gigabit internet. I still can't reliably stream above 2160 before it starts freezing every 30 seconds or so. I can, however, reliably download a video in minutes, because even if the connection slows down for a few minutes for whatever reason, it's still going to get finished. And of course there's those who have no access to gigabit internet. Here is a broadband map of the US: https://broadbandnow.com/national-broadband-map. If you set it to maximum speed, you will find that a vast majority of the country is limited to much less, with only the major metropolitan areas reliably hitting gigabit. Even if it's not in your vision for the final product of DeoVR/SLR, it's currently the only way for a great many of your subscribers who are here for scripts to experience any real semblance of your vision. Unless it requires significant development resources just to keep the function, dropping it seems needlessly purist and clearly gives the impression that you just don't much care about the customer base.
If it's a cynical business move, that's all well and good too. Business is business. But you should really re-run that risk-reward analysis. Even if your goal is to minimize the number of people who dip in and dip out for content and maximize consistent monthly subscribers, dramatically reducing your potential customer base is not the way to go about it. Netflix to this day still has a DVD-by-mail service. Granted, that service is a shell of its former self, but that's because it was allowed to slowly die out as interest in the streaming side and, more importantly, the ability to engage with the streaming side at all became more widespread. The difference, of course, being that Netflix customers have largely been satisfied with 1080 and sometimes even 720p. In the VR industry, the standard--and thus technical requirements--are far higher.
If there is a time to abandon DLNA (and not implement SMB), that time is well into the future. You perhaps have your ultimate vision/business strategy, but the infrastructure does not currently exist to support it, and the (clearly) very large portion of your userbase that will be affected by the change aren't in any position to change that. Nobody is moving to the city for porn, and we certainly can't start laying down our own fiber (though, as I've mentioned earlier, even a fiber optic connection is currently insufficient much of the time). And frankly, even many of the people who can pull it off won't bother to switch between two players.
You often hear about how piracy is spurred more by convenience and accessibility than money? Well, this is what they're talking about. You're about to push a bunch of people back onto the seas of illegitimacy (if they are able to participate at all). And given the significant backlash to a single Reddit comment that most people using your service are likely totally oblivious to, it seems safe to say this is a significant area of demand in the market that you are currently filling. If you vacate it...Someone else is going to step in. All it takes is one of them partnering with HereSphere or Pigasus or something like that, and there's going to be a new big fish in town. This isn't a question of proprietary technology; if you give up your hold on this niche, someone else is absolutely going to take it eventually. And even if they don't have SLR Originals, well, at least they'll be usable.
I dunno, I just don't see how this makes sense. Unless maintaining the functionality you've already implemented is really an extreme burden (not sure how it would be), it's a big risk for a small benefit. Please, for everyone's benefit, reconsider.
