I sure hope so. I'd love to buy one. Right now I'm using a D-Link DNS-323, which is a great little unit, if a little bit slow (but that could be my WD "green" drive). It's sort of a glaringly obvious hole in Apple's living room solution.
Pretty much the ability to watch your movies and listen to your music without having to keep a computer turned on and running iTunes. It's a convenience thing as much as a power-saving thing.
For example, in my house, I have moved all of my mp3's, my movies (from non-iTunes sources), photos, etc. onto my NAS. The D-Link NAS offers DLNA streaming and iTunes sharing (the simple kind). So on any computer, I can play my music through iTunes, or I can navigate to the shared folder to access all of my other files. On my PS3, I can watch any movie or play any music. I have a Sonos home music system that can also play my music. So can my iPad. All of this can happen whether my Mac is turned on or off.
Meanwhile, I recently got an Apple TV around Christmas time. Great little box. I bought a movie from iTunes, so it's sitting on the iTunes library on my Mac. If I want to watch the movie on my TV, I need to go over to my Mac, turn it on and start iTunes first.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that if you shared your music on a NAS via a built-in 'iTunes server' (so the files show up in iTunes as a network share rather than a local library), then you can't sync these files to an iPhone/iPod. Also, does iTunes keep ratings and playcounts for for shared music?
I have my music on a NAS, but tell iTunes that the NAS is where my local library is (and turned off the iTunes server - it continuously spins the drive in my Linkstation).