9 ms·

HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops' CPUs

264 points by latexr 1y ago

HPsquared 1y ago
It's like those cars where you pay a subscription to use the heated seats.
- adithyassekhar 1y ago
  Relevant username
conartist6 1y ago
Force them all into 480p video and link them back to the information that the mfg crippled them to save a few cents.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  While an individual license is 25¢ [0], $25MM is a somewhat sizeable amount of money for any company. However, I'd personally accept to be able to buy my own license and enable the hardware a-la Raspberry Pi fashion. Moreover, this is done on more expensive, business notebooks as well, which are both more expensive and used by the people who knows about this stuff. The executives who made these decisions are not the most informed or the most brilliant, I assume. [0]: https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/hevc-vvc/#license-fees https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/hevc-vvc/#license-fees
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    > While an individual license is 25¢ [0], $25MM is a somewhat sizeable amount of money for any company. Not for HP or Dell. Maybe I've been working in BigTech for too long, but I can't even count that low anymore. $25M is a rounding error for most major product lines I've worked on in the past decade. But, then again, every hardware producing team I've worked on had this exact penny-pinching attitude on BOM cost. They'd throw away $25M opex like it's nothing, but spend $0.25 extra on the BOM?? Never!!!
  - conartist6 1y ago
    I mean if the laptop cost $300 (feels like a very conservative estimate) providing HEVC would cost them. Lets see here... 1% would be $3, 0.33% would be $1, and the price per consumer of including the functionality would be a quarter of that, 0.0825% of the cost -- roughly a tenth of a percent.
    - conartist6 1y ago
      What is the value (to the company) of the consumer saving 25c on the purchase price and then having such a godawful experience with the product that they say "I would never buy this again, nor ever tell anyone else to buy it" The company very much doesn't want the customer to know that it spent $20 of the customer's money in wasted productivity to save itself 25 cents
jmrm 1y ago
Maybe I'm reading between lines, but isn't it ridiculous to talk about license prices when the affected machines are $900 pro laptops? I mean, I understand that in a cheap single board computer, but this is nonsense.
- iso1631 1y ago
  Someone buying one doesn't care if it's $898.54 or $898.84. However the price point is set to $899 regardless Then if someone can save just 10 cents each on 10 million units, that's $1m in "savings". Despite making it a $5 worse experience, they will do this, because the majority of buyers won't be swayed by this type of choice. "Value engineering", it's how good things get bad, and eventually new products enter the market which have consistent quality. It's one of the many problems of scale. No small company with a CEO who cares about his product is going to devalue it to save 0.1% of the cost. Once you get large though, nobody personally cares about the product, only the financials, because the financials if they do lag the product will do so after years.
  - Humperdunkel 1y ago
    Who is to say that all 'features' on a SoC won't have the licensed variants coming out of the woodwork. If Intel and AMD didn't think they were worth paying for themselves then they shouldn't have put them in silicon to pass on a few times to the consumer with a bundled copy, possibly buying it in the store anyway, maybe not even using windows or multimedia, etc. The best move would have been killing it in the crib, the next best is making no one certain the format will work with all their demographics.
  - rasz 1y ago
    >$5 worse experience lets all calm down, its about h.265 nobody sane uses anyway
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      Literally every decent video application uses h.265. What are you even talking about? Is this some Linux bigot thing?
wongarsu 1y ago
> For example, no background blurring in conference programs, significantly degraded system performance So HP and Dell, two companies well knows for business laptops, sell some laptops with degraded video conferencing, all to save $0.24 per laptop? And Dell doesn't even mention this in the spec sheet or give you a straight list which models are affected? I can't help but think that the reputational damage from "my new Dell laptop sucks with Teams, the previous one with worse specs was fine" is going to be a lot more expensive long-term than those $0.24
- iso1631 1y ago
  That will be someone elses area Boss 1 saved 0.02% of the cost of the laptop, but thanks to scale works out to be $2.4m. He walks away with his $240k bonus. Boss 2 sees increased complaints about Teams and blames Microsoft.
  - miki123211 1y ago
    Nope, boss2 fixes those complaints and gets the relevant complaint rate down by 300%. Everybody conveniently forgets why it was so high in the first place.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      1. I doubt that there is much if any overlap between companies that simultaneously do not evaluate the requirements thoroughly for the laptops that they purchase, but also are able to trace an issue with Microsoft teams down to a processor feature specification in the laptops that they've purchased, and that there are enough of these companies that they create a statistically relevant number of complaints to the upstream vendor 2. Complaints that do not translate into lost sales have no financially actionable relevance. I think you are greatly overestimating the amount that these organizations care. If your job is to sell laptop, money talks.
- graemep 1y ago
  The fear may also be that if they pay this there will be further increases in the price. its going up 20% in a few months. What if they think it will double next time, and then in another year etc?
ksec 1y ago
The problem is double dipping. If Intel and AMD represent 100% of all x86 Laptop. In theory Intel and AMD would pay the HEVC fees once, which is capped IRRC at $100M from all patent pool together. And all x86 devices would have HEVC licenses. HP and Dell shouldn't have to pay for it. In practice it seems everyone in the value chain are forced to pay, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, HP, Dell and then even browser and software. Luckily H.264 High Profile is already patent free in many countries and soon to be patent free in US too. Let's hope AV2 really get its act together this time around. Then the world would just be H.264 as baseline and AV2 for high quality.
- F3nd0 1y ago
  Until AV3 finally rolls around, of course. Then the world would be just H.264 as baseline and AV3 for high quality.
- acdha 1y ago
  > In theory Intel and AMD would pay the HEVC fees once, which is capped IRRC at $100M from all patent pool together. My understanding is that the licensing lawyers learned from Cisco doing that with H.264 for Firefox and there isn’t a cap with H.265.
  - ksec 1y ago
    There is definitely a cap with HEVC Advance and VIA. Not sure if they have closed anything about the H.264 loophole.
- breve 1y ago
  > The problem is double dipping. No, the problem is trying to use royalty-bearing formats for internet video. Royalty-free formats like AV1 avoid the problem.
  - IgorPartola 1y ago
    This is the correct answer. AV1 is amazing and with a bit more funding and hardware support it could get us out of this entire mess.
nicolaslem 1y ago
The article is a bit light on technical details. Can someone shed a light on how hardware decoding is disabled? Do they blow an efuse, disable it in the firmware or in the OS?
- kotaKat 1y ago
  From what I'd heard, it's the actual HP and Dell OEM'ed drivers they provide for the hardware. If you load the official Intel drivers, HEVC works fine. It's also reported that HEVC works fine on Linux on these affected laptops.
- Yokolos 1y ago
  It's not disabled in the sense many people are thinking. The codecs just aren't installed by default. The hardware is present and still functional. You just have to use software that directly supports HEVC or buy your own HEVC license on the Microsoft store for $1 to get system-wide hardware accelerated HEVC codecs.
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    The hardware acceleration is disabled in driver. Even using VLC you won't have acceleration for HEVC.
    - snvzz 1y ago
      Even on Linux?
      - malfist 1y ago
        Linux doesn't use the same drivers as windows
        snvzz 1y ago
        Is it confirmed that it is being disabled through drivers?
xnx 1y ago
Would be more acceptable if it was possible to pay $0.24 to enable it.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Having the feature > being able to buy it > being completely locked out of > have to subscribe to a recurring payment.
- dtech 1y ago
  You can, you need to buy a codec from the Microsoft store for $1 or local equivalent. Most people won't know this.
  - xnx 1y ago
    Does the codec enable the hardware support?
  - dist-epoch 1y ago
    Not even that, you just need to know the "hidden" link to the codecs, then it's free. I'm sure Microsoft is well aware of these links, there are many articles about them.
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    At best it will give only software decoding.
rs186 1y ago
I wonder how these decisions are made? Skimp on these things to save a few cents but ruin your user experience? It's like Samsung uses faulty "Virtual proximity sensing" instead of a real proximity sensor on some of the cheaper phones (including S series FE phones) which results in butt dialing: https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/o56uz4/s20_fe_pocket_keeps_opening_up_emergency_call/ https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/o56uz4/s20_fe_pock... -- seriously, is this the place they need to be frugal? Or, although this is a matter of more than a few dollars -- all ThinkPad T series screens are terrible with low brightness and 45% NTSC color range, unless your IT department is nice enough to purchase a version with upgraded screen, which is almost guaranteed to never happen. I used to like to hate on Apple, but these days, I appreciate how they don't cheap out on things so that user never needs to double check a specific thing in the spec sheet and deal with the mess.
- snvzz 1y ago
  >I wonder how these decisions are made? Skimp on these things to save a few cents but >ruin your user experience? How? Just what software or service does even use HEVC or VVC over H264, VP8/9 and AV1? If they were approached by mpreg, I cannot blame them for choosing to disable the codecs over paying the racket. I just wish they made a public statement about it at the time, and were loud about it in their product pages, rather than customers having to find out in this manner. Name and shame, and recommend customers to use AOM codecs, rather than silently handle it.
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    > Just what software or service does even use HEVC or VVC over H264, VP8/9 and AV1? Like everything? Its objectively better in every way. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, RDP, Teams, etc... You'll note that Zoom and Webex aren't listed which is why Teams provides sharper screen sharing with less bandwidth. Its likely they also didn't want to pay the shiny nickel to have happier users. EDIT - I left off 4k UHD Blu Ray. Thats a big one.
    - snvzz 1y ago
egorfine 1y ago
Isn't it something that was already sold to me as a customer? I don't get it how company could remove one of the features that has been already sold to me.
- latexr 1y ago
  Edit: I was wrong, I misread “purchase” as “purchased” which aligned with my (flawed) memory of what happened and it made sense with the full sentence. Original comment remains below. It’s not without precedent. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/18/1225432506/apple-watch-blood-oxygen-levels-pulse-patent-masimo https://www.npr.org/2024/01/18/1225432506/apple-watch-blood-...
  - egorfine 1y ago
    The example you provided is exactly the opposite: > no longer be available on newly purchased Apple Watch ... > customers who purchase the watches in the U.S. will still be able to see Apple's Blood Oxygen app
    - latexr 1y ago
      Edit: I misread “purchase” as “purchased”, which is wrong. You’re removing the important part. Here’s the full sentence, with emphasis: > According to the tech giant, customers who purchase the watches in the U.S. will still be able to see Apple's Blood Oxygen app on their devices, but when tapped, users will get a message saying the feature is no longer available. In other words, you saw the icon for the app but it didn’t work. The feature had been removed even for those who had already paid for it.
      - egorfine 1y ago
        True. Still not exactly feature removed after purchase. Also this was regulatory pressure which is more like act of god in legalese while removal of h265 is more like we decided to screw customers. If and only if they indeed removed the feature after purchase.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I'm assuming it's being disabled in firmware. Is there a way to re-enable it? Can the firmware be downgraded?
andix 1y ago
Is it possible to just buy the HEVC extension on the Microsoft store to enable it? I have a PC that came without the license, and I had to buy it to get everything working. It was more an annoyance than a problem, it's only a 99 cent purchase.
- Numerlor 1y ago
  Yes it should work with the codec pack, and they're keeping it on some of their laptops like with dedicated gpus
  - andix 1y ago
    So the fault is at purchasing departments, that buy incompatible laptops. They would probably need to order hevc as an option, or roll out licenses via MDM. Individual buyers can just buy the HEVC license from the Windows store. I think windows even opens the store, if the codec is missing. A lot of companies disable the public App Store on their MDM though. If missing licenses impact end users on a larger scale, it's also a communication issue from the manufacturers. This won't do them any good, as customers will be annoyed from the bad user experience. Even if one in 100 customers switches the brand, they make a loss.
- Sam6late 1y ago
  It is likely linked to increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026. The increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026 are due to a 25% rate adjustment announced by Access Advance LLC, which manages the HEVC Advance patent pool. https://accessadvance.com/2025/07/21/access-advance-announces-hevc-advance-and-vvc-advance-pricing-through-2030/ https://accessadvance.com/2025/07/21/access-advance-announce...
fransje26 1y ago
Really? Ah well. No HP and Dell laptops then. So long!
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
For the first device mentioned it has a discrete Nvidia GPU which also supports HEVC encode/decode in hardware, which I assume is also disabled?
- ChoGGi 1y ago
  Possibly in dell's customized drivers, OEM would have it.
zajio1am 1y ago
How much relevant is HEVC on computers? I encounter H.264, VP9 and AV1 and that is pretty much all. I know HEVC is used on Blu-ray and in DVB-T, but that is usually played by dedicated hardware, not PC.
- Kirby64 1y ago
  If you’re watching streaming content in 4K, most of that is streamed in HEVC. Also, any phones that record video typically do so in HEVC by default.
- tkel 1y ago
  For recording video on phones, there is h.264, and the relatively newer, better option HEVC. Thus much of peoples' photo library is becoming HEVC.
- fleshmonad 1y ago
  I don't know about you, but I have a large selection of 10 bit HEVC movies and series on my system, and hardware decoding for this is pretty nice. Apart from that, videos taken on apple devices use HEVC by default last time I checked. But in the end, it's still not that important probably, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be available/accessible
- ThatPlayer 1y ago
  Video calls and some live streamings. Steam Remote Play (together), Sunshine/Moonlight and Parsec for gaming where you can easily check the client's capabilities and go with whatever is best. Discord also does similar for video calls I believe. Steams newer game recording feature also only supports h264/h265 with no AV1 support.
- t-3 1y ago
  HEVC is pretty much a straight improvement over h264. Same quality, much smaller file sizes, and it's actually got HW decode supported in most integrated GPUs unlike av1. I've been converting all my h264 stuff, saves a lot of space on my disks.
  - 1y ago
marcodiego 1y ago
AFAIK, using linux instead if windows fixes the problem.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  On linux getting hw decode to actually work in the first place can be a challenge, especially in browsers.
breve 1y ago
Royalty-free video formats are the way to go. It avoids the problem in the first place. The internet is built on royalty-free formats and protocols. Video is not special or different.
- dylan604 1y ago
  The internet is also built on not caring about rules/regulations, and provides a treasure trove of things that are normally not obtainable due to whatever regulations.
  - Orphis 1y ago
    But it doesn't really apply when big entities with a lot of money are making the video conferencing services that would be using paid codecs. Then the consortiums have clear targets to request licenses to be paid.
- otterley 1y ago
  This argument goes back to the 1990s with the MP3 format (which was patent encumbered at the time). There was an attempt to adopt an unencumbered competitor called Ogg Vorbis, but it never got any traction.
  - pogue 1y ago
    I don't know why. It's pretty much the same argument we're seeing now with JPEG XL. Ogg works perfectly fine & is a completely servicable audio codec, but browsers just took it out of their supported codecs and devices like iPods didn't support it for whatever reason, so "normies" (to use the parlance) weren't aware of it and just went with MP3 for anything and everything. I'm sure there's some story behind why that happened...
    - otterley 1y ago
      One word: Napster.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 1y ago
In other news, Lenovo reports record quarterly earnings due to a sudden increase in corporate purchases.
knowitnone3 1y ago
Nothing new from Dell. Even their screws are cheap. Soon, they resort to using toothpick to hold their computer cases together.
jl6 1y ago
Is there any chance that this is part of a good-faith attempt to apply pressure to the patent pool consortium*? They are presumably now missing out on a substantial license fee revenue stream, and may wish to regain Dell and HP as licensees by lowering the price? There must be some thread of rationality over at patent pool HQ that knows this is just going to hyper-accelerate the migration away from HEVC to other codecs, as well as make VVC completely toxic? * Not sure if consortium is the right word. Racket maybe?
riversflow 1y ago
Pretending that this about taking a stand against patent holders of HEVC is absurd. HP and Dell clearly see the writing on the wall. PCs are a mature technology now—my 10 year old i7 6700k runs AAA games from this year fluently (albeit with an updated GPU). A laptop bought in 2025 should be entirely adequate for virtually any business task for a decade barring wear and tear or an entirely new software paradigm.
uyzstvqs 1y ago
I don't think everyone gets what is going on here. This is not just to save a few cents, as they could just add a $1.00 charge to every order if they wanted that. AV1 exists and is both better than HEVC and royalty free. H.264/AVC patents are either expired or rapidly expiring. Their likely end goal is to phase HEVC out completely, avoid VVC, and not have to deal with this licensing system at all anymore. And that makes sense. There's a good chance that practically all manufacturers will start doing this. For users, does it really matter? AV1 is being adopted faster than HEVC ever was. Beyond that, AVC has always been far more common than HEVC. It likely won't affect you, and if it does, it's easy to fix or will fix itself.
OptionOfT 1y ago
And if you decide to buy the extension from Microsoft (i.e. pay for the license yourself) on you Windows 11 machine, you are (in Microsoft's great QA fashion) greeted with: > Play High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) videos in any video app on your Windows 10 device. These extensions are designed to take advantage of hardware capabilities on some newer devices— including those with an Intel 7th Generation Core processor and newer GPU to support 4K and Ultra HD content. For devices that don’t have hardware support for HEVC videos, software support is provided, but the playback experience might vary based on the video resolution and PC performance. These extensions also let you encode HEVC content on devices that don’t have a hardware-based video encoder. Yes, Windows 10. > https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7?hl=en-US&gl=US https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7?hl=en-US&gl=U...
daveisfera 1y ago
I've been working with Intel to fix an issue in recent GPU drivers that prevents HEVC playback from working and I believe that's the real issue here rather than the licensing conclusion that this article jumps to.
zaptheimpaler 1y ago
Nokia has a legal complaint [1] against HP related to H.264 and H.265 filed October 2023. It even mentions H.265 on consumer devices being an infringement. I sort of doubt this is about paying $0.04 more per laptop - there must be some uncertainty or legal risk maybe in certain chipsets or something. [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/1/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/1/nokia-techno...

264 points by latexr 1y ago

HPsquared 1y ago

It's like those cars where you pay a subscription to use the heated seats.

adithyassekhar 1y ago
Relevant username

conartist6 1y ago

Force them all into 480p video and link them back to the information that the mfg crippled them to save a few cents.

bayindirh 1y ago
While an individual license is 25¢ [0], $25MM is a somewhat sizeable amount of money for any company. However, I'd personally accept to be able to buy my own license and enable the hardware a-la Raspberry Pi fashion. Moreover, this is done on more expensive, business notebooks as well, which are both more expensive and used by the people who knows about this stuff. The executives who made these decisions are not the most informed or the most brilliant, I assume. [0]: https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/hevc-vvc/#license-fees https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/hevc-vvc/#license-fees
- ryandrake 1y ago
  > While an individual license is 25¢ [0], $25MM is a somewhat sizeable amount of money for any company. Not for HP or Dell. Maybe I've been working in BigTech for too long, but I can't even count that low anymore. $25M is a rounding error for most major product lines I've worked on in the past decade. But, then again, every hardware producing team I've worked on had this exact penny-pinching attitude on BOM cost. They'd throw away $25M opex like it's nothing, but spend $0.25 extra on the BOM?? Never!!!
- conartist6 1y ago
  I mean if the laptop cost $300 (feels like a very conservative estimate) providing HEVC would cost them. Lets see here... 1% would be $3, 0.33% would be $1, and the price per consumer of including the functionality would be a quarter of that, 0.0825% of the cost -- roughly a tenth of a percent.
  - conartist6 1y ago
    What is the value (to the company) of the consumer saving 25c on the purchase price and then having such a godawful experience with the product that they say "I would never buy this again, nor ever tell anyone else to buy it" The company very much doesn't want the customer to know that it spent $20 of the customer's money in wasted productivity to save itself 25 cents

jmrm 1y ago

Maybe I'm reading between lines, but isn't it ridiculous to talk about license prices when the affected machines are $900 pro laptops? I mean, I understand that in a cheap single board computer, but this is nonsense.

iso1631 1y ago
Someone buying one doesn't care if it's $898.54 or $898.84. However the price point is set to $899 regardless Then if someone can save just 10 cents each on 10 million units, that's $1m in "savings". Despite making it a $5 worse experience, they will do this, because the majority of buyers won't be swayed by this type of choice. "Value engineering", it's how good things get bad, and eventually new products enter the market which have consistent quality. It's one of the many problems of scale. No small company with a CEO who cares about his product is going to devalue it to save 0.1% of the cost. Once you get large though, nobody personally cares about the product, only the financials, because the financials if they do lag the product will do so after years.
- Humperdunkel 1y ago
  Who is to say that all 'features' on a SoC won't have the licensed variants coming out of the woodwork. If Intel and AMD didn't think they were worth paying for themselves then they shouldn't have put them in silicon to pass on a few times to the consumer with a bundled copy, possibly buying it in the store anyway, maybe not even using windows or multimedia, etc. The best move would have been killing it in the crib, the next best is making no one certain the format will work with all their demographics.
- rasz 1y ago
  >$5 worse experience lets all calm down, its about h.265 nobody sane uses anyway
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    Literally every decent video application uses h.265. What are you even talking about? Is this some Linux bigot thing?

wongarsu 1y ago

> For example, no background blurring in conference programs, significantly degraded system performance So HP and Dell, two companies well knows for business laptops, sell some laptops with degraded video conferencing, all to save $0.24 per laptop? And Dell doesn't even mention this in the spec sheet or give you a straight list which models are affected? I can't help but think that the reputational damage from "my new Dell laptop sucks with Teams, the previous one with worse specs was fine" is going to be a lot more expensive long-term than those $0.24

iso1631 1y ago
That will be someone elses area Boss 1 saved 0.02% of the cost of the laptop, but thanks to scale works out to be $2.4m. He walks away with his $240k bonus. Boss 2 sees increased complaints about Teams and blames Microsoft.
- miki123211 1y ago
  Nope, boss2 fixes those complaints and gets the relevant complaint rate down by 300%. Everybody conveniently forgets why it was so high in the first place.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    1. I doubt that there is much if any overlap between companies that simultaneously do not evaluate the requirements thoroughly for the laptops that they purchase, but also are able to trace an issue with Microsoft teams down to a processor feature specification in the laptops that they've purchased, and that there are enough of these companies that they create a statistically relevant number of complaints to the upstream vendor 2. Complaints that do not translate into lost sales have no financially actionable relevance. I think you are greatly overestimating the amount that these organizations care. If your job is to sell laptop, money talks.
graemep 1y ago
The fear may also be that if they pay this there will be further increases in the price. its going up 20% in a few months. What if they think it will double next time, and then in another year etc?

ksec 1y ago

The problem is double dipping. If Intel and AMD represent 100% of all x86 Laptop. In theory Intel and AMD would pay the HEVC fees once, which is capped IRRC at $100M from all patent pool together. And all x86 devices would have HEVC licenses. HP and Dell shouldn't have to pay for it. In practice it seems everyone in the value chain are forced to pay, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, HP, Dell and then even browser and software. Luckily H.264 High Profile is already patent free in many countries and soon to be patent free in US too. Let's hope AV2 really get its act together this time around. Then the world would just be H.264 as baseline and AV2 for high quality.

F3nd0 1y ago
Until AV3 finally rolls around, of course. Then the world would be just H.264 as baseline and AV3 for high quality.
acdha 1y ago
> In theory Intel and AMD would pay the HEVC fees once, which is capped IRRC at $100M from all patent pool together. My understanding is that the licensing lawyers learned from Cisco doing that with H.264 for Firefox and there isn’t a cap with H.265.
- ksec 1y ago
  There is definitely a cap with HEVC Advance and VIA. Not sure if they have closed anything about the H.264 loophole.
breve 1y ago
> The problem is double dipping. No, the problem is trying to use royalty-bearing formats for internet video. Royalty-free formats like AV1 avoid the problem.
- IgorPartola 1y ago
  This is the correct answer. AV1 is amazing and with a bit more funding and hardware support it could get us out of this entire mess.

nicolaslem 1y ago

The article is a bit light on technical details. Can someone shed a light on how hardware decoding is disabled? Do they blow an efuse, disable it in the firmware or in the OS?

kotaKat 1y ago
From what I'd heard, it's the actual HP and Dell OEM'ed drivers they provide for the hardware. If you load the official Intel drivers, HEVC works fine. It's also reported that HEVC works fine on Linux on these affected laptops.
Yokolos 1y ago
It's not disabled in the sense many people are thinking. The codecs just aren't installed by default. The hardware is present and still functional. You just have to use software that directly supports HEVC or buy your own HEVC license on the Microsoft store for $1 to get system-wide hardware accelerated HEVC codecs.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  The hardware acceleration is disabled in driver. Even using VLC you won't have acceleration for HEVC.
  - snvzz 1y ago
    Even on Linux?
    - malfist 1y ago
      Linux doesn't use the same drivers as windows
      - snvzz 1y ago
        Is it confirmed that it is being disabled through drivers?

xnx 1y ago

Would be more acceptable if it was possible to pay $0.24 to enable it.

bayindirh 1y ago
Having the feature > being able to buy it > being completely locked out of > have to subscribe to a recurring payment.
dtech 1y ago
You can, you need to buy a codec from the Microsoft store for $1 or local equivalent. Most people won't know this.
- xnx 1y ago
  Does the codec enable the hardware support?
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  Not even that, you just need to know the "hidden" link to the codecs, then it's free. I'm sure Microsoft is well aware of these links, there are many articles about them.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  At best it will give only software decoding.

rs186 1y ago

I wonder how these decisions are made? Skimp on these things to save a few cents but ruin your user experience? It's like Samsung uses faulty "Virtual proximity sensing" instead of a real proximity sensor on some of the cheaper phones (including S series FE phones) which results in butt dialing: https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/o56uz4/s20_fe_pocket_keeps_opening_up_emergency_call/ https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/o56uz4/s20_fe_pock... -- seriously, is this the place they need to be frugal? Or, although this is a matter of more than a few dollars -- all ThinkPad T series screens are terrible with low brightness and 45% NTSC color range, unless your IT department is nice enough to purchase a version with upgraded screen, which is almost guaranteed to never happen. I used to like to hate on Apple, but these days, I appreciate how they don't cheap out on things so that user never needs to double check a specific thing in the spec sheet and deal with the mess.

snvzz 1y ago
>I wonder how these decisions are made? Skimp on these things to save a few cents but >ruin your user experience? How? Just what software or service does even use HEVC or VVC over H264, VP8/9 and AV1? If they were approached by mpreg, I cannot blame them for choosing to disable the codecs over paying the racket. I just wish they made a public statement about it at the time, and were loud about it in their product pages, rather than customers having to find out in this manner. Name and shame, and recommend customers to use AOM codecs, rather than silently handle it.
- mapontosevenths 1y ago
  > Just what software or service does even use HEVC or VVC over H264, VP8/9 and AV1? Like everything? Its objectively better in every way. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, RDP, Teams, etc... You'll note that Zoom and Webex aren't listed which is why Teams provides sharper screen sharing with less bandwidth. Its likely they also didn't want to pay the shiny nickel to have happier users. EDIT - I left off 4k UHD Blu Ray. Thats a big one.
  - snvzz 1y ago

egorfine 1y ago

Isn't it something that was already sold to me as a customer? I don't get it how company could remove one of the features that has been already sold to me.

latexr 1y ago
Edit: I was wrong, I misread “purchase” as “purchased” which aligned with my (flawed) memory of what happened and it made sense with the full sentence. Original comment remains below. It’s not without precedent. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/18/1225432506/apple-watch-blood-oxygen-levels-pulse-patent-masimo https://www.npr.org/2024/01/18/1225432506/apple-watch-blood-...
- egorfine 1y ago
  The example you provided is exactly the opposite: > no longer be available on newly purchased Apple Watch ... > customers who purchase the watches in the U.S. will still be able to see Apple's Blood Oxygen app
  - latexr 1y ago
    Edit: I misread “purchase” as “purchased”, which is wrong. You’re removing the important part. Here’s the full sentence, with emphasis: > According to the tech giant, customers who purchase the watches in the U.S. will still be able to see Apple's Blood Oxygen app on their devices, but when tapped, users will get a message saying the feature is no longer available. In other words, you saw the icon for the app but it didn’t work. The feature had been removed even for those who had already paid for it.
    - egorfine 1y ago
      True. Still not exactly feature removed after purchase. Also this was regulatory pressure which is more like act of god in legalese while removal of h265 is more like we decided to screw customers. If and only if they indeed removed the feature after purchase.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

I'm assuming it's being disabled in firmware. Is there a way to re-enable it? Can the firmware be downgraded?

andix 1y ago

Is it possible to just buy the HEVC extension on the Microsoft store to enable it? I have a PC that came without the license, and I had to buy it to get everything working. It was more an annoyance than a problem, it's only a 99 cent purchase.

Numerlor 1y ago
Yes it should work with the codec pack, and they're keeping it on some of their laptops like with dedicated gpus
- andix 1y ago
  So the fault is at purchasing departments, that buy incompatible laptops. They would probably need to order hevc as an option, or roll out licenses via MDM. Individual buyers can just buy the HEVC license from the Windows store. I think windows even opens the store, if the codec is missing. A lot of companies disable the public App Store on their MDM though. If missing licenses impact end users on a larger scale, it's also a communication issue from the manufacturers. This won't do them any good, as customers will be annoyed from the bad user experience. Even if one in 100 customers switches the brand, they make a loss.
Sam6late 1y ago
It is likely linked to increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026. The increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026 are due to a 25% rate adjustment announced by Access Advance LLC, which manages the HEVC Advance patent pool. https://accessadvance.com/2025/07/21/access-advance-announces-hevc-advance-and-vvc-advance-pricing-through-2030/ https://accessadvance.com/2025/07/21/access-advance-announce...

fransje26 1y ago

Really? Ah well. No HP and Dell laptops then. So long!

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

For the first device mentioned it has a discrete Nvidia GPU which also supports HEVC encode/decode in hardware, which I assume is also disabled?

ChoGGi 1y ago
Possibly in dell's customized drivers, OEM would have it.

zajio1am 1y ago

How much relevant is HEVC on computers? I encounter H.264, VP9 and AV1 and that is pretty much all. I know HEVC is used on Blu-ray and in DVB-T, but that is usually played by dedicated hardware, not PC.

Kirby64 1y ago
If you’re watching streaming content in 4K, most of that is streamed in HEVC. Also, any phones that record video typically do so in HEVC by default.
tkel 1y ago
For recording video on phones, there is h.264, and the relatively newer, better option HEVC. Thus much of peoples' photo library is becoming HEVC.
fleshmonad 1y ago
I don't know about you, but I have a large selection of 10 bit HEVC movies and series on my system, and hardware decoding for this is pretty nice. Apart from that, videos taken on apple devices use HEVC by default last time I checked. But in the end, it's still not that important probably, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be available/accessible
ThatPlayer 1y ago
Video calls and some live streamings. Steam Remote Play (together), Sunshine/Moonlight and Parsec for gaming where you can easily check the client's capabilities and go with whatever is best. Discord also does similar for video calls I believe. Steams newer game recording feature also only supports h264/h265 with no AV1 support.
t-3 1y ago
HEVC is pretty much a straight improvement over h264. Same quality, much smaller file sizes, and it's actually got HW decode supported in most integrated GPUs unlike av1. I've been converting all my h264 stuff, saves a lot of space on my disks.
- 1y ago

marcodiego 1y ago

AFAIK, using linux instead if windows fixes the problem.

whatevaa 1y ago
On linux getting hw decode to actually work in the first place can be a challenge, especially in browsers.

breve 1y ago

Royalty-free video formats are the way to go. It avoids the problem in the first place. The internet is built on royalty-free formats and protocols. Video is not special or different.

dylan604 1y ago
The internet is also built on not caring about rules/regulations, and provides a treasure trove of things that are normally not obtainable due to whatever regulations.
- Orphis 1y ago
  But it doesn't really apply when big entities with a lot of money are making the video conferencing services that would be using paid codecs. Then the consortiums have clear targets to request licenses to be paid.
otterley 1y ago
This argument goes back to the 1990s with the MP3 format (which was patent encumbered at the time). There was an attempt to adopt an unencumbered competitor called Ogg Vorbis, but it never got any traction.
- pogue 1y ago
  I don't know why. It's pretty much the same argument we're seeing now with JPEG XL. Ogg works perfectly fine & is a completely servicable audio codec, but browsers just took it out of their supported codecs and devices like iPods didn't support it for whatever reason, so "normies" (to use the parlance) weren't aware of it and just went with MP3 for anything and everything. I'm sure there's some story behind why that happened...
  - otterley 1y ago
    One word: Napster.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 1y ago

In other news, Lenovo reports record quarterly earnings due to a sudden increase in corporate purchases.

knowitnone3 1y ago

Nothing new from Dell. Even their screws are cheap. Soon, they resort to using toothpick to hold their computer cases together.

jl6 1y ago

Is there any chance that this is part of a good-faith attempt to apply pressure to the patent pool consortium*? They are presumably now missing out on a substantial license fee revenue stream, and may wish to regain Dell and HP as licensees by lowering the price? There must be some thread of rationality over at patent pool HQ that knows this is just going to hyper-accelerate the migration away from HEVC to other codecs, as well as make VVC completely toxic? * Not sure if consortium is the right word. Racket maybe?

riversflow 1y ago

Pretending that this about taking a stand against patent holders of HEVC is absurd. HP and Dell clearly see the writing on the wall. PCs are a mature technology now—my 10 year old i7 6700k runs AAA games from this year fluently (albeit with an updated GPU). A laptop bought in 2025 should be entirely adequate for virtually any business task for a decade barring wear and tear or an entirely new software paradigm.

uyzstvqs 1y ago

I don't think everyone gets what is going on here. This is not just to save a few cents, as they could just add a $1.00 charge to every order if they wanted that. AV1 exists and is both better than HEVC and royalty free. H.264/AVC patents are either expired or rapidly expiring. Their likely end goal is to phase HEVC out completely, avoid VVC, and not have to deal with this licensing system at all anymore. And that makes sense. There's a good chance that practically all manufacturers will start doing this. For users, does it really matter? AV1 is being adopted faster than HEVC ever was. Beyond that, AVC has always been far more common than HEVC. It likely won't affect you, and if it does, it's easy to fix or will fix itself.

OptionOfT 1y ago

And if you decide to buy the extension from Microsoft (i.e. pay for the license yourself) on you Windows 11 machine, you are (in Microsoft's great QA fashion) greeted with: > Play High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) videos in any video app on your Windows 10 device. These extensions are designed to take advantage of hardware capabilities on some newer devices— including those with an Intel 7th Generation Core processor and newer GPU to support 4K and Ultra HD content. For devices that don’t have hardware support for HEVC videos, software support is provided, but the playback experience might vary based on the video resolution and PC performance. These extensions also let you encode HEVC content on devices that don’t have a hardware-based video encoder. Yes, Windows 10. > https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7?hl=en-US&gl=US https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7?hl=en-US&gl=U...

daveisfera 1y ago

I've been working with Intel to fix an issue in recent GPU drivers that prevents HEVC playback from working and I believe that's the real issue here rather than the licensing conclusion that this article jumps to.

zaptheimpaler 1y ago

Nokia has a legal complaint [1] against HP related to H.264 and H.265 filed October 2023. It even mentions H.265 on consumer devices being an infringement. I sort of doubt this is about paying $0.04 more per laptop - there must be some uncertainty or legal risk maybe in certain chipsets or something. [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/1/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/1/nokia-techno...