I have a QNAP TS-451 NAS which also acts as my media player, It has HDMI out and runs kodi on the NAS. I switched from a HTPC / NAS setup to this box and it really is an all in one.
Synology NAS 412+ along with an expansion DX513. A total of 9 HDD bays. So far I have about 20TB odd, all full of music, movies and picture.
Connected to a Intel NUC running Kodi.
Not bad setup.
I must admit I am baffled by HTPC and media servers. Are they simply a PC with HDMI out, where you can store all your digital media? I would like to rip all my blu ray and dvd discs onto a server as it is a real pain for me to store all my discs and locate a particular film ( I use a case logic 300 disc thing