Appears that Synology is no longer going to support hardware transcoding on their NAS, even if the Intel CPU supports it.
There may be workarounds, but its unclear if they work reliably and will not break in the future. Customers looking for a new NAS should avoid Synology.
Statement from Synology:
As part of our roadmap, starting with products released in 2025 and beyond, even if the CPU supports hardware transcoding, we will no longer provide the driver required to enable it. An exception is the BeeStation Plus, where we specifically obtained the appropriate licenses and paid the required fees, which is why hardware transcoding is available on that model.
We hope this explanation helps you gain a clearer understanding of the situation, and we sincerely appreciate your feedback, as it helps us better address the concerns of our users.
Best Regards,
Technical Support
Dino Hsu
and more details:
Regarding your concern about the removal of hardware transcoding support for HEVC (H.265) and AVC (H.264) on the 25-series models, we would like to provide some clarification.
HEVC/AVC technology involves licensing requirements. We have previously negotiated with the licensors, and enabling hardware transcoding on new models would result in additional royalty fees. To avoid passing these costs on to our users, we decided to disable hardware transcoding functionality through the kernel graphic driver on the latest models.
Although the hardware itself is technically capable of transcoding, this functionality will not be available on new devices. We understand that this change may affect certain use cases, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.
We have also previously stated that transcoding support for HEVC and AVC is no longer available.
Thank you for your understanding. Should you have further needs or suggestions regarding your usage scenarios, please feel free to share them with us.
Best Regards,
Technical Support
Dino Hsu