Summary
- HP disabled H.265 (HEVC) hardware decoding on select Pro/EliteBooks, breaking browser video playback.
- Workaround: disable browser hardware acceleration; restores playback but breaks virtual backgrounds and effects.
- Likely cause: HP let HEVC licensing lapse, shifting the technical cost to customers on pricey ‘Pro’ laptops.
Video playback is dependent on a lot of low-level stuff—mainly, codecs, which decode video files into something you’re actually able to watch and consume. Some HP computers are suffering from issues with playing videos, and it’s all due to some weird codec shenanigans tracking back to HP itself.
Some HP ProBook and EliteBook models which ship with H.265/HEVC hardware decoding are seeing their decoding capabilities seemingly intentionally disabled, leading to significant software conflicts and the inability to watch any video using HEVC. In affected systems, web browsers—including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox—to play any HEVC (H.265) video content. Instead of playback, users were met with an infinite loading screen. Local media players, such as VLC or the native Windows Media Player, could successfully play the same HEVC files, but those are decoded using software rather than hardware, whereas browsers would use hardware decoding. So that means that these computer models had HEVC hardware decoding disabled, even as it was previously enabled and working fine.
There are a few fixes available for affected machines. The most notable one involves disabling hardware acceleration entirely in web browsers and web-based apps. This, however, cripples the system in other ways and might break stuff such as background blurring and virtual backgrounds in video conferencing programs like Microsoft Teams or Zoom.
As to why exactly this is happening, no one knows for sure, but many speculate that HP’s HEVC license expired and the company was forced to pull it. Either HP is trying to negotiate better terms as I write this, or it has decided to simply stop paying for it. There’s a reason why HEVC is not widely adopted yet. While H.265 offers superior compression and quality, its adoption has been hampered by a messy and costly “patent pool” system, which requires manufacturers to pay royalties.
This appears to be a deliberate decision if true. HP’s official “Quick Specs” datasheets for the affected models—which include the HP ProBook 460 G11, ProBook 465 G11, and EliteBook 665 G11—explicitly state under the “Graphics” section that “H.265 Hardware Decoding is disabled on the platform.” The problem is that if HP stopped paying for this license, the company is passing the technical consequences directly to its customers. It’s especially troublesome as these are “Pro” laptops are supposed to be equipped with decent technical capabilities for this day and age, and arguably, that should include HEVC support—especially considering their price.
We’ve reached out to HP for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
Source: Reddit
