Synology has backtracked on one of its most unpopular decisions in years. After seeing NAS sales plummet in 2025, the company has decided to lift restrictions that forced users to buy its own Synology hard drives.
Starting to think that companies are all competing on a secretive Achievements Global Leaderboard.
Synology finally unlocked: “Hubris - only 99% of other large corporations have achieved this”.
I have an old Synology NAS; which i was considering upgrading.
But…
They removed Video Station and HEVC support
Recently moved to remove all hardware transcoding
This stupid HD restriction
The decision to once again cheap out on hardware. My Synology is about as powerful as a first-gen Netbook. Newer models aren’t much of a step-up. I’m surprised they opted to upgrade networking to 2.5gbe, probably pressure from competitors.
Edit: from a comment, the e-waste builds with non-upgradeable RAM
Yes the software is easy and reliable to use, but the fact that I only need to interact with it a few times a year, means it’s no longer a selling point for me.
Look for a used Gen 8 HP microserver. 4 3.5 bays, replaceable cpus from celeron to some xeons. Upgradeable ram. An extra slim CD bay that can be reourposed for an SSD, power sippy, pretty nice looking, not super silent, but replaceable fans,
I really like mine, and it’s running Xpenology, essentially Synology OS
True. When I first started experimenting with the NAS to stream home media, Video Station worked fine. And I could also access content outside of the home network without messing about. Obviously Jellyfin, Emby, Plex are better.
I just started playing around with it. I have a DS220+ so it has more horsepower than your ‘16, however a good plugin I found was “disable transcoding” it’ll basically send the stream raw to a device and leave it to the device to deal with. As such it flies on that hardware.
You forgot charging a small fortune for their e-waste boxes. I have the 1819+ and it’s the only device I’ll have ever bought from them. It was reasonably priced at the time.
Starting to think that companies are all competing on a secretive Achievements Global Leaderboard.
Synology finally unlocked: “Hubris - only 99% of other large corporations have achieved this”.
I have an old Synology NAS; which i was considering upgrading.
But…
Yes the software is easy and reliable to use, but the fact that I only need to interact with it a few times a year, means it’s no longer a selling point for me.
Look for a used Gen 8 HP microserver. 4 3.5 bays, replaceable cpus from celeron to some xeons. Upgradeable ram. An extra slim CD bay that can be reourposed for an SSD, power sippy, pretty nice looking, not super silent, but replaceable fans,
I really like mine, and it’s running Xpenology, essentially Synology OS
I think it will be a custom build next time. I’ll still use the old one just for backing up photos from my phone.
Do want something that’s quiet and sips power when idle, but can easily transcode any content when needed.
How many people used Video Station instead of Jellyfin in a container?
True. When I first started experimenting with the NAS to stream home media, Video Station worked fine. And I could also access content outside of the home network without messing about. Obviously Jellyfin, Emby, Plex are better.
To be fair, neither runs well on my DS916+. I use the NAS for storage and have a laptop next to it as a Linux server with Docker containers.
I just started playing around with it. I have a DS220+ so it has more horsepower than your ‘16, however a good plugin I found was “disable transcoding” it’ll basically send the stream raw to a device and leave it to the device to deal with. As such it flies on that hardware.
You forgot charging a small fortune for their e-waste boxes. I have the 1819+ and it’s the only device I’ll have ever bought from them. It was reasonably priced at the time.
I made the mistake of buying one where the ram couldn’t be upgraded. 2GB is a joke. Had to send it back.