Dell and HP disable hardware H.265 decoding on select PCs due to rising royalty costs — companies could save big on HEVC royalties, but at the expense of users

Dell and HP have begun to ship some of their PCs with disabled HEVC/H.265 hardware decoding, potentially in a bid to avoid paying royalties to patent holders, reports Ars Technica. The majority of PCs that come with disabled HEVC/H.265 hardware decoding capability are business-oriented entry-level or mainstream machines, whereas premium offerings with high-quality displays come with all the features activated.

Dell and HP confirmed to Ars Technica that a number of their laptops, including Dell’s ‘standard and base systems’ as well as HP’s EliteBook and ProBook 600 Series G11, 400 Series G11, and 200 Series G9 laptops, come with disabled support for hardware decoding of video streams encoded using the HEVC/H.265 codec. Dell emphasized that systems featuring an integrated 4K display, a standalone GPU, Dolby Vision, or Cyberlink Blu-ray software come equipped with HEVC/H.265 hardware decoding capability. Interestingly, Dell advises users to purchase ‘an affordable third-party app from the Microsoft Store’ to re-enable HEVC decoding.