We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
The original move was especially idiotic given that tech savvy users of their products - a rather significant proportion - were able to easily add their existing HDDs to the accepted drivers DB. All they accomplished was making a bunch of techies rather pissed off.
Burn the goodwill of your power users and act surprised when they stop recommending your product.
I have an asustor. If anyone is looking for a NAS, I recommend that. It's a decent little device.
Ha ha, enjoy being bought out by a competitor
It's almost like the entire policy was pointless and a blatant manipulation tactic.
Now do hardware transcoding.