Some owners of HP and Dell laptops are finding that their machines can
no longer playback HEVC/H.265-encoded video content, even though this capability is supposed to be built into their hardware <
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/hp-and-dell-disable-hevc-support-built-into-their-laptops-cpus/>.
Why is this happening? The obvious answer: patent issues. The royalty
rates these companies have to pay to offer this functionality is going
up quite substantially from next year, and they have to cut costs. So
the users will have to pay extra money to get this capability back.
Synology also used to offer the capability to transcode videos to
H.265 on some of its products, but discontinued that as of last year.
This is why AV1 was created by Google and other companies: to offer a patent-free alternative to H.265. But in spite of all the patent
issues that were clear from the beginning, lots of companies went
ahead with H.265-based products regardless. Maybe now we will see the popularity of AV1 increase?
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)