The OEM hardware codec shutdown also comes as associated costs for the international video compression standard are set to increase in January as Access Advance licensing administrator announced in July. Per breaking from the patent pool administration Licensed Alliance VIAHEVC royalty rates for more than 100,001 units increase from $0.20 per unit to $0.24 per unit in the United States. By comparison, in the third quarter of 2025, HP sold 15,002,000 laptops and desktops and Dell sold 10,166,000 laptops and desktops. according to Gartner.
Last year, Synology's NAS announced that the company is ending support for HEVC transcoding, as well as H.264/AVC and VCI on its DiskStation Manager and BeeStation OS platforms, saying that “video codec support is widespread on end devices such as smartphones, tablets, computers and smart TVs.”
“This update reduces unnecessary resource usage on the server and significantly improves the efficiency of media processing. The optimization is especially effective in environments with large numbers of users compared to traditional server-side processing,” the announcement states.
Despite the increasing costs and complexities of HEVC licenses and workarounds, breaking features that have been widely available for years will likely lead to confusion and frustration.
“It's kind of funny considering these systems cost over $800 per machine, are part of the 'Pro' line (the branding is justified – HEVC is used professionally), and more and more apps besides Netflix and streaming TV are starting to use HEVC these days,” the Redditor wrote.
