Device to play media from NAS over Ethernet?

[Enquiries]

Hi
I found your website and was wondering if you possibly have some advice for me... We have the following setup - and are missing a key piece:

Setup:
- WLAN / LAN network in my house
- Drobo NAS, connected to the network (it has an IP and everything)
- An ONKYO digital receiver/amplifier: this connects to the beamer, the speakers, etc.

What we are missing:
A device which can (via WLAN or better LAN) connect to the NAS on the network, access the media there (photos, music, movies, ...) and output them to, e.g. HDMI, which we can then connect to the ONKYO receiver.

So far we always used a laptop for this, connected to the ONKYO receiver via HDMI cable. This is obviously a hassle... Some years ago I once had a "Popcorn Hour" player, but that broke at some point - and I wasn't really able to find a similar device again...

We really only need a device to play media off of the NAS - we don't have Netflix or any other streaming services and aren't looking to get any... And it seems that nowadays all the products I can find focus on free or paid streaming services from the web, not accessing your own NAS on a local network...

Do you know which device would serve us well?

Price is not a huge concern - I'm rather concerned that we'd want to make sure that it is possible to update codecs/encodings/... to make sure the device is able to play the latest audio and video formats (that was always a problem with the Popcorn Hour, it never was able to play x265).

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Florian

[ed]

Have a look at the back of your amplifier. If you have an Ethernet port then very likely it supports DLNA network streaming. This way you could connect to your NAS via the network instead of HDMI. If you do not have this port, you may wish to upgrade to something like this in the future - this really simplifies things.But in a meantime, you can get Qnap NAS with HDMI port. You can install HD Station app which turns this NAS into a computer. You can control media with your remote. TS-251D and TS-253D are HDMI2.0 ready supporting 4K streaming. Alternatively, you can look at Asustor solutions with HMI2.0a if you need HDR.I hope this helps.