Dell and HP Disable HEVC Hardware Decoding on Entry-Level PCs
Thanks to probably reduced manufacturing costs, the specific models of computers developed by these PC giants were shipped with HEVC (H.265) hardware decoding capabilities turned off. Such limitations would primarily affect the entry-level and mainstream business laptops, whereas in most of the premium models this feature should generally remain.
Why Is This Happening
The cost of patent royalties appears to be the primary motivator here. Although HEVC decoding is supported at the silicon level by modern Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors, enabling it at the user level requires OEMs to pay licensing fees to certain patent pools, including MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media. These fees could be anywhere from cents to a dollar plus per unit.
So, tens of millions of units shipped every year would add up to hundreds of millions in royalties for such companies. By turning off this capability on cheaper products, Dell and HP could potentially save tens of millions of dollars every year.
Which Models Are Affected
Both companies have confirmed some lines are affected by this
- HP included are the EliteBook and ProBook 600 series G11, 400 series G11, and 200 series G9 laptops.
- Dell subsumed under the category of standard and base systems.
Conversely, premium systems—specifically systems with integrated 4K displays, discrete GPUs, Dolby Vision support, or Cyberlink Blu-ray software bundled—typically enable HEVC hardware decoding.
User Impact and Possible Workarounds
Hardware decoding allows playback to happen more efficiently with lesser battery consumption on the graphics processing unit. Without hardware decoding, the burden of playing back high-definition material falls back onto software decoding on the CPU, resulting in reduced system performance and higher battery drain.
Can You Fix It
There are a few nuances to regaining this functionality
- Driver Updates If the manufacturers disabled the feature via a custom driver, it might be possible for the user to enable it by installing the generic drivers directly from the GPU vendor (Intel, AMD, or Nvidia). Trade-offs may include loss of the OEM-specific customizations.
- Firmware Locks If it's been disabled at the firmware level, restoring it is much harder, if not impossible, for the average user.
- Software Solutions Another solution proposed is to purchase a third-party app in the Microsoft Store to process HEVC content. These apps tend to actually offer software decoding rather than breaking the efficient hardware path.
More and more, users will have to turn to the open-source codec AV1 to take advantage of hardware-accelerated decoding of HEVC contents as the feature becomes less standard on budget machinery or alternatively ensure that their CPUs have enough grunt to decode H.265 streams via software.
