Some Dell and HP laptop owners have been befuddled by their machines’ inability to play HEVC/H.265 content in web browsers, despite their machines’ processors having integrated decoding support.
Laptops with sixth-generation Intel Core and later processors have built-in hardware support for HEVC decoding and encoding. AMD has made laptop chips supporting the codec since 2015. However, both Dell and HP have disabled this feature on some of their popular business notebooks.
HP discloses this in the data sheets for its affected laptops, which include the HP ProBook 460 G11 [PDF], ProBook 465 G11 [PDF], and EliteBook 665 G11 [PDF].
“Hardware acceleration for CODEC H.265/HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is disabled on this platform,” the note reads.
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While HP’s and Dell’s reps didn’t explain the companies’ motives, it’s possible that the OEMs are looking to minimize costs, since OEMs may pay some or all of the licensing fees associated with HEVC hardware decoding and encoding support, as well as some or all of the royalties per the number of devices that they sell with HEVC hardware decoding and encoding support
As a Kia owner this reminds of of when some accountant decided to save $1.34 per vehicle by removing the electronic key verifier from their models and didn’t tell anyone starting like 15 years ago. Then someone in FL figured it out and millions of cars were stolen at enormous cost, class action lawsuits etc. for the company. I’m still waiting for my check.