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.
The vm/container side is less important than the “cant run a RAID parity check regularly because it makes the NAS useless” part. Thats my qnap experience. It might have gotten better, but it was shit heel for me, and the NAS was in the 1k range.
I’d argue that a NAS should be able to run containers at this point. NAS hardware does not need to be utterly gutless just because it can be. A versatile NAS is actually a great first choice for a homelab setup before you start to expand.