No, it’s a licensing issue. H.265 hardware support requires an ongoing license. And HP+Dell don’t want to continue paying licensing fees for PCs they have already sold. So they’re telling customers “get fucked, use a media player with software decoding instead of using hardware acceleration directly in your browser.”
No, it’s a licensing issue. H.265 hardware support requires an ongoing license. And HP+Dell don’t want to continue paying licensing fees for PCs they have already sold. So they’re telling customers “get fucked, use a media player with software decoding instead of using hardware acceleration directly in your browser.”
What is your source for it needing constant renewal?
This is for new hardware sales only, not existing.?
This doesn’t answer the Linux part of the question.
What does “licensing issue” means for the laptop itself? Is HEVC disabled at BIOS/firmware level, or it is just disabled at Windows driver level?
In the latter case, HEVC should work with Linux, as it uses generic Intel/AMD drivers, instead of specific Dell/HP ones.
It’s enabled at the hardware level only if the hevc license is paid, usually by the OEM (such as dell or hp).