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

Well, what the world really needs are laptops with built-in HVAC support!

They are disabling it because the license cost went up 4 cents? Just pass that cost onto the customer. Even if they mark that up several times, I would rather pay that than have my battery drained because I have to software decode a video.

There is still a lot of H.265 content out there. I have many terabytes of it that I don't want to transcode.

"license cost" is a stupid problem to have in the first place. adopt a foss standard, why won't this get through to these thick skulled morons.
- Well, hevc already is a standard. It’s too late now. AV1 will need some time until it’s widely adopted.
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NMZLZ57R3T7
You can still buy it yourself. It's only $1.
- Not in this case, this is the codec, but still, because it's blocked in acpi, there's no way to enable it again in Windows, even if you pay that dollar. Workaround: install Linux

synology also did this recently. shit should be illegal.

that was the final straw for me to switch NAS vendors when I next upgrade.
- What would you recommend instead? I'm about to get one.
What should be illegal is patents like this!
From the article:
Last year, NAS company Synology announced that it was ending support for HEVC, as well as H.264/AVC and VCI, transcoding on its DiskStation Manager and BeeStation OS platforms, saying that “support for video codecs is widespread on end devices, such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs.”
Well, not anymore lol.

Our hero.
- Never meet your heroes. Speaking from very literal experience regarding Stallman.

Yes this is absolutely ridiculous.

This is also a good reason to avoid proprietary codecs. H.265 may be a great codec, but the licensing fees are basically a tax on the world.

The best solution would be an overall switch to AV1. But silicon support for that is not nearly as widespread.

Yeah that’s going to change fucking fast. My game streaming service I build from older parts to cut costs has 1 shiney modern part because of AV1. Just AV1. Nothing else influenced the purchase of that part.
And there is no way a big company made that part just for me.
- Yeah but look at the AV1 hardware support matrix. A lot of current mobile silicon supports decode, not nearly as much supports encode. To have AV1 truly replace MP4/MP5 a hardware encode is necessary so you can do video calls in AV1.
  The one who could really make this happen is Apple. If they decided to move away from MPEG-LA and embraced open codecs (AV1 / VP9 / Opus / FLAC / AVIF / JPEGXL / JPEG2000), supporting them in software, hardware, and their services (imessage/ichat/facetime, music store, video store) that would single handedly push the industry.
  They did that with HEIC- before iPhones switched to HEIC by default nobody bothered with the encumbered format. Now it's become de facto standard. That SHOULD have been something open like AVIF, JPEG XL, etc.

I don't for a second believe this is about the rising cost. It raised by $0.04. Someone below said that works out to a savings of $600,000.

Alright, but for an individual, it's $0.04.

Just increase the final price by $0.25. You made back your $600,000. Plus whatever $0.21 would equate to as GAINS.

Fuck guys. You suck at business. This is what happens when companies replace their CEO with AI.

The real key is buried in the middle, where they say hardware decode capabilities are going to be restricted to models with discrete GPUs... Meaning they can make a $500 upsell mandatory for the most basic of capabilities.
- Both HP and Dell are partnered with Microsoft, and have been for decades. Isn't a discrete GPU one of the things required for Microsoft Recall ready machines?
  There's NO way they broke HEVC just for 4¢. Something else is paying them a lot more, and Recall would be one of those things.
The HP 16" EliteBook 665 G11 Notebook costs $1500. That means this $600k "cost cutting" measure starts to decrease revenue if only 400 people buy a laptop from a different brand.
Or even a single person. Someone tasked to purchase 400 laptops for a company, reads this news and decides to get ThinkPads instead...
Sell the CEO private jet if they really need the money

Imagine buying a "Pro" laptop that can't even play HEVC videos without software transcoding. This is insane penny pinching and infuriating

So the hardware is capable, but refuses to work until someone pays for the licensing cost. Yay capitalism bringing innovation!

It’s interesting how the tone of innovation changes. It starts out like “hey, I can do that better than my competitors!” and that’s all fine, doing something better creating market demand and cash influx. But eventually, the innovation looks for shortcuts… enshitification is the word. Cheaper parts, smaller quantities, subscriptions to hardware you buy but never own… There’s a shift from product/service innovation as means to financial growth to purely financially incentivized innovation.
It reminds me of Marx’s idea that concentration of capital naturally leads to the prominence of financial markets, an indicator of a capitalist economy reaching its “advanced” / crisis-prone phase. The similarity being: there’s an economic shift from industrial investment as means to financial growth to purely financial investment.

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

“This is pretty ridiculous, given these systems are $800+ a machine

I wonder how long the list of these fees for one machine is

That's about a $600,000 savings for that quarter, for a company that reported $13.9 billion in revenue for Q3 2025.
- It would be cruel of us to ask them to only have $13,899,400,000 in revenue that quarter instead of $13,900,000,000
- Someone was a doing a lot of hard work subtracting big scary numbers in their budget sheet.
- I wonder what they spent paying people to implement and communicate this change.
  At 600k for a company that size this cost them more money than just paying the extra 4 cents.

Is it disabled in hardware, firmware or software? Does Linux enable it?

Reading through a bit it sounds like it works on Linux, not on Windows. Folks are hypothesizing it’s disabled at the ACPI level because different drivers don’t help.

Here's two brands I've not touched in decades. Keeping it that way.

What have you touched recently? Asking, because my Lenovo V14 thing is fine inside, but everything mechanical is crumbling in my hands.
- It might be possible for you to replace the 'upper case / palmrest' (top section of your laptop with the keyboard and trackpad.)
  Check the manual to see, buy a generic computer repair kit with basic tools to open a laptop case, buy a set of screws in bulk from aliexpress. The screw sizes may not have to match exactly, but it depends on the screw and location.
  You could try following the manual during the repair, but I found it to be cumbersome and unnecessary. I was able to replace the upper case of my laptop in less than 15 minutes by just looking at it and removing what was in the way.
- Lenovo V series is cheap, prefer Thinkpads, especially T series. Used Thinkpads tend to still last a long time.
  HP Pavilion and Dell Inspiron or whatever are also cheap and worse quality than the cheap Lenovos IMO. HP Elitebooks were fine last I touched them, years aho. Dell Latitude too, though bad models exist

does dell/hp have to pay annual license fees in perpetuity for systems they sell????

H.265 (HEVC) is not a free (as in freedom) codec, so yes. You as an individual consumer can use things like Handbrake to encode H.265 video for your personal use, probably using the free x265 software encoder, but in order for a device like your phone, camera, TV, laptop, etc. to have hardware accelerated encoding or decoding, the manufacturer has to pay a licensing fee.
This is true of lots of proprietary technologies. HDMI is another one. In order for a device to ship with an HDMI port (as opposed to Displayport), the manufacturer has to pay a per-device licensing fee.
- To be fair, I think it is okay to ask for a one-time fee for something you've developed. You want to use this $tech that I made? Sure, pay me 10 ct for every device you put it in.
- has to pay a per-device licensing fee.
  Where I'm confused, is that it would be a perpertual/long term annual license fee per device. It would make sense to have a one time fee per device shipped. That would not affect older models.
  I guess what is happening is that manufacturers can stop paying for the capabilities by "downgrading" their driver support, and it affects old and new systems the same when users "update"?
- Do they also need to pay for VGA or DVI?

Dumb of HP and Dell to not eat the cost. Just in the future never support VVC. HEVC is well enough a thing already. Push defaults to be AV1 and then in like 5-7 years, AV2. I use AV1 for everything I can. Computer supports it. My phone does not but edits I do on my PC will be encoded to AV1. Photos, support JPEG-XL but in the interim, AVIF. Screw apple for going with HEIC. I highly doubt that there will be a successor to UHD Blu-Rays to adopt VVC. No big reason to jump to 8k. Only good would be higher bitrates/better compression and audio.

Films are mostly recorded digitally with 4k-6k cameras or a limited amount of 35mm still going on that scans well to around 4k. 8K digital cinema cameras are becoming more common but the 4k-6k ones are dominant and 70mm is expensive and uncommon. Plus significant digital effects are prevalent on even low action movies, non-sci-fi. Those are still going to have been mostly done and mastered for 4k. Another round of remastering required for 8k content where digital or 70mm film masters exists. Dinosaur broadcasters may choose VVC the shrinking world population watching dinosaur broadcasters. AV1 is increasingly the present and AV2 will be the future. VVC will be end of line because of short sighted greed

It's clearly a move to make torrent for movies unviable and get funding from Netflix.

Not until you pull the handbrake at least

i use x265 for EVERYTHING. i had no clue about this.

fuck.

webm? lol

webm is a container, not a codec
Even if you hit that blocker, you can still software-decode with [alternative] software.
- i clearly need to educate myself
AV1
- No need for AI summary, I found this in two seconds as a web search.
  https://getstream.io/glossary/video-codecs/
  At any rate, it looks like the AI was pretty accurate this time. Cheers!
- I love how to never answered what GPU you had 🤣

How is this done? Can you just re-enable the feature in the BIOS? And what about machines sold outside the US?

Kinda makes me even more glad I've been migrating all my stuff over to AV1/OPUS.

So in this case, even if your hardware was impacted by this, if you tried to play a H.265 (HEVC) file within Windows, it would play, but will software encode / decode. What if you are playing something through a client like VLC or Jellyfin Media Player? Prior to this change, would Jellyfin report Direct Playing (using iGPU) and now it will be forced to transcode on the server side, and VLC would still use the CPU for encoding and decoding, since there is no server to do it for you?
- "Direct playing" just means the source file is entirely compatible with the client device and doesn't require any transcoding/re-encoding by the server, it doesn't really tell you whether the client is using software or hardware decoding to play it. I'm guessing it's probable that a Jellyfin server could still report "direct playing" even if the client is using software decoding to play it. However, if the client device is something like a smart TV or something with a more locked down OS, and the maintainer/manufacturer removes support for a codec from that device, you may show more transcoding action on your server for things that previously just direct played because smart devices like that may not have support for software decoding, or may not have the horsepower to try even if they still have the codecs installed.
Make sure to use "disable phase inversion" for Opus if you want good quality in mono. I'm suprised this isn't set by default.
- I just set it to downmix to mono in Handbrake and it's been alright. I'll definitely do some reading/comparing to see what this setting is all about though.

Is that a hardware or software issue? I.e. is it caused by the windows driver for these laptops' graphic units?

Does HEVC work with the Linux drivers on these machines?

No, it’s a licensing issue. H.265 hardware support requires an ongoing license. And HP+Dell don’t want to continue paying licensing fees for PCs they have already sold. So they’re telling customers “get fucked, use a media player with software decoding instead of using hardware acceleration directly in your browser.”
- What is your source for it needing constant renewal?
  This is for new hardware sales only, not existing.?
- This doesn't answer the Linux part of the question.
  What does "licensing issue" means for the laptop itself? Is HEVC disabled at BIOS/firmware level, or it is just disabled at Windows driver level?
  In the latter case, HEVC should work with Linux, as it uses generic Intel/AMD drivers, instead of specific Dell/HP ones.

Anyone has a list of the Dell laptops? I have a Latitude 7350 Detachable with an intel core ultra 164U. I think I might be affected...but then again, I have it running KDE neon, so not sure if this is disabled at hardware level or if it will work on a different OS.

Can't current CPUs decode it in real time?

They're a business and they need to make money!

You know what? Good.

Because we don't like Dell and HP or because we don't like HEVC?
- Them selling it then taking it away means they are vulnerable to class action. It’s a bait and switch. The fact that this licensing put them in that position means they may be less likely to trust, use, and therefore empower this behavior in the future.

So, yeah, HP and Dell are fucked - by what you may ask? Why, AI of course, because it's hiked memory prices so far up it's eating up their profit margins. They might be doomed.