Synology’s 2025 refresh brought the DS225+ and DS425+ with the familiar Intel Celeron J4125, but it also quietly removed the kernel graphics driver support that Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby use for hardware transcoding of H.264 and HEVC. This guide explains what changed, why it matters for real-world streaming, and how you can restore GPU-accelerated transcoding on these models using an unofficial SSH method shared by the community. If you rely on your NAS to reshape 4K or high bitrate files for phones, tablets, hotel TVs, or limited connections, this walkthrough will help you get that efficiency back.
This is some bullshit. I have an old DS418+ I’ve been thinking to upgrade from. But with this change I won’t be getting another Synology.
what reason do they give for removing the feature?
Synology confirmed the change in support tickets, explaining that both H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) transcoding had been deliberately blocked at the kernel driver level. The company cited licensing costs for HEVC, even though AVC is license-free, and argued that most client devices already support native playback.
I’m looking for a NAS and Synology was on the top of my list. But their new models only support Synology HDDs. That is already a huge red flag. And now that. Feels like Synology really doesn’t care about their customers…
I might go with a self build solution.
Synology publishes a list of certified non-synology drives, and warns you that drives outside the list are not recommended, but, at least in non enterprise models, allows them to be used. I believe there is some rather easy way (some config file change or the like) to circumvent the limitation, but yeah, dick move.
Go with a self build + unraid. NGL a Ryzen 5500 build is so cheap and much more powerful than these overpriced boxes, and unraid is pretty good. If I didn’t buy a ds415+ a couple of years ago I’d swap over.
I am back on Kodi on Android TV box for a long time.
The official Synology app kind of sucks anyways. I used to use the Samsung app that played like 75 percent of the movies and not the rest, some codec BS.
So kodi is not push, it’s pull. That whole Mediaserver thing is obsolete with it. It’s a pity because technically that other system is superior and is running for no reason now.
Oh and my nas is so old it is too slow to transcode anyways.
