HP adn Dell Drop HEVC Hardware Decoding Support Amid Rising Licensing Costs
October 16, 2025 – HP and Dell are disabling hardware support for the HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec) within their laptops’ CPUs, a move coinciding with impending increases to HEVC licensing fees. The change impacts video transcoding and playback performance for users of these devices.
the decision follows a similar announcement last year by NAS company Synology, which ended support for HEVC, H.264/AVC, and VCI transcoding on its DiskStation manager and BeeStation OS platforms. Synology stated that “support for video codecs is widespread on end devices, such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs.” The company claimed the update would “reduce needless resource usage on the server and considerably improves media processing efficiency,” especially in high-user environments.
The shift comes as licensing costs for HEVC are set to rise in January. Access Advance, the licensing administrator, announced in July that royalty rates would be increasing. according to a breakdown from VIA Licensing Alliance,royalty rates for HEVC for over 100,001 units will increase from $0.20 each to $0.24 each in the United States.
To illustrate the potential financial impact, Gartner reports that HP sold 15,002,000 laptops and desktops in Q3 2025, while Dell sold 10,166,000 units during the same period.
Despite the growing costs and complexities surrounding HEVC licensing, the removal of a feature widely available for years is expected to cause user frustration. “This is pretty ridiculous, given these systems are $800+ a machine, are part of a ‘Pro’ line (jabs at branding names are warranted - HEVC is used professionally), and more applications these days outside of Netflix and streaming TV are getting around to adopting HEVC,” one Redditor commented.
