This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
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 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.
He's usually right.
*On software. For the love of god don't follow his ideas on consent, child sex, or bestiality.
Or plants. Or whether you should shout at people. Or sort of the concept of women.
Or eating toe funk
For the love of god don’t follow his ideas on consent, child sex, or bestiality.
Or eating habits
Ugh, there’s a Google search I’m happy not to do.
Our hero.
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
Revenue wouldn't change from this, only expenses and profit.
Yeah, I was just riffing from the other post but you're right, that's not how that works.
Fair enough
Someone was a doing a lot of hard work subtracting big scary numbers in their budget sheet.
Imagine buying a "Pro" laptop that can't even play HEVC videos without software transcoding. This is insane penny pinching and infuriating
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.
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.
Nah, that's an NPU.
I shoulda looked it up, lol. Thanks for the correction.
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
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.
My problem is mostly with the moving parts and places with screws, all the plastic there is cracked and crumbling.
So it'd be more like replacing the whole "shell", which would make sense if I knew where one can buy that, LOL.
In the worst case? On ebay, as a "For parts/not working" model with a reasonably intact exterior. Might take a bit of patience.
You may be able to find the replacement parts on amazon or the manufacturer's website.
Look up replacement parts for your specific model and go from there.
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
Let me get this straight - people buy a product advertised as having a feature, containing a part also advertised as having that feature, and then they disable it after purchase?
How is that legal?
Americans have no consumer protections.
So the hardware is capable, but refuses to work until someone pays for the licensing cost. Yay capitalism bringing innovation!
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.
It's clearly a move to make torrent for movies unviable and get funding from Netflix.
How is this done? Can you just re-enable the feature in the BIOS? And what about machines sold outside the US?
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?
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.
i use x265 for EVERYTHING. i had no clue about this.
fuck.
webm? lol
AV1
webm is a container, not a codec
Even if you hit that blocker, you can still software-decode with [alternative] software.
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
They're a business and they need to make money!
