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.
https://xpenology.org/
Stuff like that puts me off. By default it’s basically illegal, so we have no idea when the developers will need to retain legal counsel that explicitly tells them to delete everything and cease discussing it.
Support and maintenance are a nightmare, and based on the other folks here talking about it, it’s certainly something to have to tinker with heavily.
If i’m going to have to tinker, i’m going to go with FOSS stuff if I can. I’d rather learn something that will be useful for a while.
I use Xpenology on an HP Gen 8 microswrver, a pretty nifty piece of kit. Works great, but setting up and upgrading versions can be a rather involved process.