empireOfLove2HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops’ CPUs
humanspiraldoes dell/hp have to pay annual license fees in perpetuity for systems they sell???
GerowenH.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.
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”?
H.265 is not a royalty free standard like AV1, VP9, Theora, etc. It’s covered by proprietary patents held by groups like MPEG LA so in order for manufacturers to build hardware level support for it into their devices they have to pay whatever the then current royalty fees are to those patent holders.