u/Lectem

Support just told me they don't even know if it ever worked.

I've been asking them to tell me what version of ADM supported HW decoding on my Nas for a while, got many back and forth (I mentioned it here https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNAS/comments/1u0025u/asustor_is_discontinuing_hardware_decoding/ ) and finally got a "closed support ticket ".

To this day they still advertise (and propably sell) NASes with a realtek chip for "4k decoding" that apparently... Perhaps never worked, or so they say:

Rough translation of their final answer:

>Thank you for your patience.

>Regarding your question, we are unfortunately unable to confirm the existence of a specific version of ADM or FFmpeg that officially supports hardware acceleration on this model.
Best regards.

If it's a licencing issue they could at least have the guts to say it but whatever.

I guess buying a NAS instead of building one with parts I control was a mistake.

I bought an AS1104T about a year ago as it showed clearly on its product page "High performance, 4K decoding" https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=71%C2%A0%C2%A0

But as soon as I tried to use it, I realized it was not supported it all, but at the time I thought "it might be because of me, I'll investigate later".

Supposedly ADM4.x is supposed to support it properly, and ADM5.x discontinued HW support ( https://www.asustor.com/product/status_detail?id=10 ).

So I stayed on ADM4.x on purpose: I want my hardware decoder to work.

Except it does not on 4.X either. I'm starting to doubt it ever did.

So I ended up contacting the support and explained the issue:

>Description of the Issue
>
>The video hardware acceleration feature, advertised as part of the Drivestor (AS1104T), does not work under ADM 4.3:
>
>
>
>In other words, hardware transcoding is not used by any ASUSTOR application, despite being listed in the product specifications.

I sent this 20days ago, and the support answered 6 times either telling me "it's not supported anymore in ADM5" or "you should update to ADM5" which both are non-starters: I paid for hardware decoding.

I restated the problem many times, and they even ended up asking me after discussing the issue (4 back and forth laters"

> Could you please provide detailed information about what you need or what you are trying to achieve, so that we can explore alternative solutions to offer you?

To which I answered

> I need to use the hardware decoder (for example via ffmpeg). > As mentioned in my initial message, ffmpeg in the latest ADM 4 crashes on HEVC videos (both H.264 and H.265). Additionally, ADM 5 does not make use of the hardware decoder. > As a result, it is currently impossible for me to use hardware decoding on my device.

then support answered

> I understand what you are pointing out, but unfortunately, the NAS does not currently support this functionality.

THEN WHY DO YOU FUCKING ADVERTISE IT?!

(false advertisement which is punishable by law in Europe)

Asustor doesn't even know if HW transcoding ever worked on AS1104T

ASUSTOR: Is discontinuing hardware decoding standard practice now?!