> For example, no background blurring in conference programs, significantly degraded system performance
So HP and Dell, two companies well knows for business laptops, sell some laptops with degraded video conferencing, all to save $0.24 per laptop? And Dell doesn't even mention this in the spec sheet or give you a straight list which models are affected?
I can't help but think that the reputational damage from "my new Dell laptop sucks with Teams, the previous one with worse specs was fine" is going to be a lot more expensive long-term than those $0.24
The problem is double dipping. If Intel and AMD represent 100% of all x86 Laptop. In theory Intel and AMD would pay the HEVC fees once, which is capped IRRC at $100M from all patent pool together. And all x86 devices would have HEVC licenses. HP and Dell shouldn't have to pay for it.
In practice it seems everyone in the value chain are forced to pay, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, HP, Dell and then even browser and software.
Luckily H.264 High Profile is already patent free in many countries and soon to be patent free in US too. Let's hope AV2 really get its act together this time around. Then the world would just be H.264 as baseline and AV2 for high quality.
The article is a bit light on technical details. Can someone shed a light on how hardware decoding is disabled? Do they blow an efuse, disable it in the firmware or in the OS?
It's not disabled in the sense many people are thinking. The codecs just aren't installed by default. The hardware is present and still functional. You just have to use software that directly supports HEVC or buy your own HEVC license on the Microsoft store for $1 to get system-wide hardware accelerated HEVC codecs.
From what I'd heard, it's the actual HP and Dell OEM'ed drivers they provide for the hardware. If you load the official Intel drivers, HEVC works fine.
It's also reported that HEVC works fine on Linux on these affected laptops.
Someone buying one doesn't care if it's $898.54 or $898.84.
However the price point is set to $899 regardless
Then if someone can save just 10 cents each on 10 million units, that's $1m in "savings". Despite making it a $5 worse experience, they will do this, because the majority of buyers won't be swayed by this type of choice.
"Value engineering", it's how good things get bad, and eventually new products enter the market which have consistent quality. It's one of the many problems of scale. No small company with a CEO who cares about his product is going to devalue it to save 0.1% of the cost. Once you get large though, nobody personally cares about the product, only the financials, because the financials if they do lag the product will do so after years.
So HP and Dell, two companies well knows for business laptops, sell some laptops with degraded video conferencing, all to save $0.24 per laptop? And Dell doesn't even mention this in the spec sheet or give you a straight list which models are affected?
I can't help but think that the reputational damage from "my new Dell laptop sucks with Teams, the previous one with worse specs was fine" is going to be a lot more expensive long-term than those $0.24
Boss 1 saved 0.02% of the cost of the laptop, but thanks to scale works out to be $2.4m. He walks away with his $240k bonus.
Boss 2 sees increased complaints about Teams and blames Microsoft.
In practice it seems everyone in the value chain are forced to pay, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, HP, Dell and then even browser and software.
Luckily H.264 High Profile is already patent free in many countries and soon to be patent free in US too. Let's hope AV2 really get its act together this time around. Then the world would just be H.264 as baseline and AV2 for high quality.
It's also reported that HEVC works fine on Linux on these affected laptops.
However, I'd personally accept to be able to buy my own license and enable the hardware a-la Raspberry Pi fashion.
Moreover, this is done on more expensive, business notebooks as well, which are both more expensive and used by the people who knows about this stuff.
The executives who made these decisions are not the most informed or the most brilliant, I assume.
[0]: https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/hevc-vvc/#license-fees
I mean, I understand that in a cheap single board computer, but this is nonsense.
However the price point is set to $899 regardless
Then if someone can save just 10 cents each on 10 million units, that's $1m in "savings". Despite making it a $5 worse experience, they will do this, because the majority of buyers won't be swayed by this type of choice.
"Value engineering", it's how good things get bad, and eventually new products enter the market which have consistent quality. It's one of the many problems of scale. No small company with a CEO who cares about his product is going to devalue it to save 0.1% of the cost. Once you get large though, nobody personally cares about the product, only the financials, because the financials if they do lag the product will do so after years.