I am specifically talking about the movie/video playback functionality.
Many years ago QNAP had a dedicated qpkg for KODI, support was good and all were happy. Then out of the blue kodi and Plex Player support was pulled together with a very crippled native ffmpeg build (and removal of codexpack). We never got an explanation from QNAP, but shortly after QNAP implemented an (also Taiwanese) codec from a company called CAYIN.
QNAP has disgruntled (one way or another) all 3rd party devs that tried to sideload KODI into HDStation, so currently no active development is done.
So the alternative of a cheapo KODI player vs. all sorts of grief trying to get media playback to work … not worth it.