What Is Going On With HEVC On New Laptops
If you recently bought a Dell or HP business laptop and noticed that high quality video can be weirdly laggy or pixelated, you are not imagining it. Many entry level and midrange business models from these brands are now shipping with hardware decoding for HEVC also known as H.265 turned off on purpose.
This is not a bug or a random driver glitch. It is a business decision. Even though the processors in these laptops often support HEVC decoding at the hardware level Dell and HP have chosen to disable it in software for a lot of their corporate focused machines.
That means when you play HEVC video the system will often fall back to software decoding handled by the CPU instead of using the much faster and more efficient video block built into the chip.
Why HEVC Is Being Disabled
To understand why this is happening you need to know a bit about what HEVC is and how licensing works.
HEVC is a modern video compression standard that can deliver high quality video at much lower bitrates than older formats like H.264. That makes it great for 4K content streaming and saving storage space. The catch is that using HEVC in hardware is tied to multiple patent pools and licensing systems.
Every device that officially supports HEVC hardware decoding can trigger royalty fees. For a big manufacturer that ships millions of laptops every year even a fairly small fee per device quickly adds up. On tight margin machines especially basic business laptops that cost conscious companies buy in bulk those extra fees can eat heavily into profits.
So from the point of view of Dell and HP the logic looks like this:
- The CPU and integrated graphics technically support HEVC decoding.
- Enabling that support and advertising it may require paying royalties.
- Most office workers mainly use web apps documents email and video calls where HEVC is less critical.
- Turning off HEVC hardware decoding avoids a growing stream of codec costs.
The end result is that many business systems ship with HEVC hardware decoding disabled even though the silicon under the hood is perfectly capable of handling it.
What This Means For Everyday Users
For a lot of office related tasks you might never notice this change. Web browsing spreadsheets and text documents do not care about HEVC at all. But if you watch a lot of high resolution video or work with video files this decision can have a real impact.
Here is what you might run into on these laptops:
- HEVC video files needing more CPU power since decoding is done in software instead of dedicated hardware.
- Fans spinning up more often and battery life dropping faster during video playback.
- Choppy playback or frame drops with 4K or high bitrate HEVC content especially on lower power CPUs.
- Media apps showing limited support or falling back to older codecs when possible.
If you are in content creation streaming or you regularly download high quality HEVC video this can make a business laptop feel weaker than it technically is. The hardware can do the job but software and licensing settings are holding it back.
For IT departments and businesses the trade off is different. Many companies care more about lower purchase prices and simpler licensing than perfect video performance. For them turning off HEVC hardware decoding is often acceptable especially if most employees rarely play local 4K video files.
What You Can Do As A Buyer Or User
If you are shopping for a laptop and you care about smooth HEVC playback there are a few ways to approach this situation.
- Look at consumer focused models instead of pure business lines since gaming and multimedia laptops are more likely to keep HEVC hardware decoding enabled.
- Check reviews and spec sheets and search for mentions of HEVC or H.265 support rather than assuming every modern laptop handles it in hardware.
- Consider alternative codecs like AV1 or stick with H.264 if your workflow allows even though HEVC is often more efficient.
- If you already own a Dell or HP business laptop look for vendor information or driver updates but keep expectations realistic since the limitation is often tied to licensing policy not just a missing driver.
From a bigger picture angle this is another example of how codec patents and royalty systems directly affect everyday tech. You can buy a perfectly modern machine and still find key features locked away because activating them would cost the manufacturer more money.
Going forward it will be interesting to watch how this plays out as newer royalty free codecs like AV1 gain traction. For now though if your shiny new work laptop struggles with HEVC there is a good chance the problem is not the chip inside but the licensing switch that has been turned off above it.
Original article and image: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/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
