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.
…
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.
Make it a $1 store app download like MS did.
Then, donate any profits on that store app to open source alternatives.
There, I turned it from a PR problem to a PR homerun.
Yeah. There’s other precedent for that, too.
With the original Xbox, you couldn’t play DVD’s without the infrared remote kit (even though the software and hardware was capable). The license fee for that was part of the cost of the IR receiver and remote kit.
Didn’t the original Raspberry Pi also sell codec licenses as well?
This is a comical accountant-driven decision.
Kind of reminds me of Raspbian/Raspberry PIs and mpeg4 decoding.
The hardware can do it; but you’ve gotta purchase a separate license key specific to your serial number, and add it to the boot partition, to unlock it.
I bought one for one of the three pis I’ve got.
The margins are a little slimmer on a $50 SBC vs a $1200 laptop though…
Seriously, WTFuck?
I’d be so pissed.
Associated costs with HEVC licensing rise
Sounds like bullshit.
Bubble popped
I’m actually not too mad at HP/Dell for this one. This type of licencing is bullshit anyway. It would be real nice if everyone (on software and hardware side) simply stopped supporting these proprietary codecs altogether and moved to open standards.
Yeah, the licensing is BS but couldn’t they just tack on like 40 cents to the price or whatever? For a $900+ machine, it wouldn’t even be a rounding error.
Open codecs are better, yeah, but artificially crippling existing media workflows is kind of a dick move, IMO.
There’s really no way to force change without somebody being a dick. The vast majority of people are barely aware that codecs are a thing, let alone know how the licencing situation works. If it’s not the hardware vendors that push back, the status quo will go on forever.
Well they could not be dicks and fund and support open alternatives.
However this is just greedy corporations being greedy at the expenses of their customers.
The funding and support is not really the issue at the moment; it’s getting the whole industry to change course that needs to happen. None of that will happen if everyone just goes along with the status quo. History is littered with technologies that failed, not because they were worse, but because the inferior option was there first, and nothing broke that technological momentum.
Ok, but again this is NOT trying to change the status quo.
Don’t be fooled.
I don’t need to be fooled/not fooled. The effect is the point and the motivation is irrelevant.
This is the whole “free market capitalism” thing working as intended. One company wants money to use their patented tech. The other companies don’t want to pay, so they choose to not use the tech. For non essential goods and services, where free alternatives exist, I am perfectly fine with this setup.
Here we are, I feared exactly this answer.
Capitalism doesn’t fuel innovation, but only enshittification.
I’m sorry you haven’t realized it yet, because it’s in front of our eyes everywhere we can look.
Licences are weird. Some would even say stupid.
Except driver’s licenses. Those are far too easy to get, especially for some people lol.
And license to kill is far too hard to obtain.
This type of licensing is going to ruin technology going forward.
This type of licensing
is going to ruinhas been ruining technologygoing forwardsince the 80s.FTFY
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 [PDF]. Chipmakers may take some of this burden off of OEMs, but companies don’t typically publicly disclose these terms.
The OEMs disabling codec hardware also comes as associated costs for the international video compression standard are set to increase in January, as licensing administrator Access Advance announced in July. Per a breakdown from patent pool administration VIA Licensing Alliance, royalty rates for HEVC for over 100,001 units are increasing from $0.20 each to $0.24 each in the United States. To put that into perspective, in Q3 2025, HP sold 15,002,000 laptops and desktops, and Dell sold 10,166,000 laptops and desktops, per Gartner.
So that’s quarterly savings of around $400,000 for Dell and $600,000 for HP, if they disabled it for all of their devices, which they’re not. So maybe saving $1 million per year at Dell and maybe $2 million at HP.
