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.

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

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

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

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

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

fuck.

webm? lol

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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