Acer and ASUS are now banned from selling PCs and laptops in Germany following Nokia HEVC video codec patent ruling
Posted by AbhishMuk@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 108 comments
arf20__@reddit
I love being able to use H.265 for free thanks to x265đĽ°
Jaded_Soil4398@reddit
You're a fucking idiot
gorion@reddit
What downfall of Nokia. From leading tech company to patent troll/abuser.
RZ_Domain@reddit
Yup, nobody wanted their network equipments either so governments had to ban Huawei to prop up Nokia sales.
Ok-Mechanic7969@reddit
That is absolutely not why Huawei was banned
Either-Airline6046@reddit
That is absolutely why, just like BYD having outcompeted every single domestic EV car manfacturer. Unless you're a sinophobe that believes European citizens are being spied on by China when their own governments are guilty of it already.
Whirblewind@reddit
"If you disagree with me on my narrow conspiratorial assessment you're a racist."
Jaded_Soil4398@reddit
I don't know why people are even bothering because it's clearly just a chinese bot
Either-Airline6046@reddit
Genuinely why would China install backdoors and make their equipment more sophisticated and expensive when they can just purchase all spying info they want from Meta.
cgaWolf@reddit
You really think China wants their cybercrime/warfarw capabilities to be depenent on the goodwill of a geopolitical rival?
Of course they're doing both, anything else is amateue hour.
Joshposh70@reddit
Because theyâre not trying to spy on you and your messages with your nan. Theyâre trying to spy on governments, and last I checked governments arenât sending classified documents over Facebook?
Either-Airline6046@reddit
I forgot, they use Signal group chat
PumpThose@reddit
Why would facebook sell to china if it's an extension of the us spying network? US/US vassals(EU) could be spying on their own citizens and still not want china to spy on them.
Timely_Challenge_670@reddit
By âoutcompetedâ do you mean received absurdly large illegal government subsidies?
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-threatens-higher-tariffs-on-chinese-electric-cars/a-69342363
Either-Airline6046@reddit
Why can't EU subsidize their own citizens?
Timely_Challenge_670@reddit
Uh, because the WTO has rules on what subsidies a government can offer. If China wants to be a part of the WTO, it needs to follow those rules. Itâs why the US is being sued over their tariffs.
Either-Airline6046@reddit
Airbus constantly violates WTO rules, EU farmers do too and not to mention German government's lenient handling of Volkswagen emission scandal. And as you mentioned USA does not care one bit about the rules either.
But my point wasn't about whataboutism on who's breaking rules but rather free market economy of the west is losing as all the surplus value is funneled towards billionaires rather than investing in manufacturing and infrastructure.
Timely_Challenge_670@reddit
So your solution is what? More subsidies for VWAG? Throw away the international rules based order?
StickiStickman@reddit
"illegal government subsidies"
lmao
Timely_Challenge_670@reddit
Lmao? You think the WTO rules are a joke orâŚ? If China doesnât like it, they donât have to be a member of the WTO. But then, they shouldnât be surprised when people donât want to trade with them.
StickiStickman@reddit
Western nations would never pump giant subsidies into their auto industries! Oh wait. But it's China, so it's bad!
Timely_Challenge_670@reddit
If Western nations are pumping subsidies into the auto industry that violate the WTO, then China is free to litigate or also ban the EU or US from selling cars there.
This isnât a âChina, therefore bad thingâ this is âthere is credible evidence that China is violating the WTO, therefore the EU has responded,â thing.
As I said, the US has been hit multiple times for violating agricultural subsidy rules. Why do you think the WTO did not strike down taxes on US chickens?
_teslaTrooper@reddit
um
https://nltimes.nl/2022/11/01/chinese-police-stations-netherlands-ordered-close-immediately
Ok-Mechanic7969@reddit
Do you lock your door at night?
The_Keg@reddit
Daily reminder that there are pieces of shit that conveniently forget that Google is banned in China.
Just got back from guangzhou and I couldnt use Gsuite there at all. The West could literally do all sort of stuffs to Chinese corporations like Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi... without looking like hypocrites because the Chinese did it first.
intelminer@reddit
+50 social credit
DwarfPaladin84@reddit
*Cisco sales rep sweating looking at NCS2k system* Yeah, for real Nokia is WAY overpriced...
Worked with Ciena, Cisco and Nokia installing core optical transport shelves, and I gotta say... Ciena and Nokia give WAY better pricing on optical equipment.
Hell, even their routers for Cell Tower Backhaul networks is cheaper than Cisco routers.
LastChancellor@reddit
oh my God, not this again
Oppo & OnePlus already had to sit through this shit for like 3 years
jaypizzl@reddit
Yeah itâs wild these huge multinational corporations canât figure out that theyâre not allowed to sell pirated software. It seems straightforward⌠pay for it or donât sell it.
BlueSwordM@reddit
I mean, there's always the other solution of only supporting open royalty free codecs like AV1.
Darkknight1939@reddit
AV1 HW decode support is still relatively limited versus HEVC. This likely a limiting factor in adoption.
LAwLzaWU1A@reddit
Pretty much every single device released in the last 5 years (with the exception of Qualcomm and Apple) have had hardware accelerated AV1 decoding support. I would not say that's limited. It's a shame Apple and Qualcomm dragged their feet but pretty much all PCs and media players released in the last 5 years support it. Software wise support is also great.
Darkknight1939@reddit
This is an extremely large caveat, lol
Pristine-Woodpecker@reddit
That's the thing, you can't even really do this. The patent pools give you zero guarantees they're complete. It's an extortion racket.
Lighthouse_seek@reddit
You will never get me to side with a patent troll
Masztufa@reddit
How is asus and acer the ones infringing the patent?
How is it not the gpu which may have hardware codec for it, or a software implementation of it?
DonStimpo@reddit
They are probably not paying the license fee.
HP recently removed HEVC support from all their devices, including already sold devices due to license fee issues.
190n@reddit
I think their question is: why is the GPU or SoC vendor not the only one responsible for paying license fees, since they are selling the silicon which implements Nokia's patented technologies?
Is it that the OEMs are actually the one who is supposed to license these patents? Or have the chip vendors already paid and now Nokia is trying to double-dip?
LAwLzaWU1A@reddit
A lot of the licenses are to be paid by the maker of the completed system. It is simply easier to track so that's why it is often done that way. It also means that chip manufacturers won't be as reluctant to add support because they are not the ones responsible for paying a fee, so it helps with adoption as well.
zephyrus299@reddit
Because that would increase the price for enterprise and business customers who won't use it. Don't need h265 support on an office machine or most servers.
euvie@reddit
They can only collect once from either Acer or Intel yes, but generally they donât like to consider raw chips as needing codec patent licenses since they prefer to collect from the final product with the higher sale price
towe96@reddit
It's also always the same corrupt Munich Regional Count that sides pro-Nokia / pro-patent trolls.
Must've been quite a bit of cash involved...
pdp10@reddit
The H.265 patent situation is a tire fire of monstrous proportions.
Except for a couple of sectors where H.265 compatibility is important, the general winning strategy is to go AV1, and wait for H.264 patents to expire globally.
BuchMaister@reddit
The question for the royalty free codecs like AV1/VP9 are they using patents from patent pool group like Access Advance? As this group includes the use of those free codecs under their licensing agreement:
https://accessadvance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/VDP-Pool-Program-Overview-July-2025-1.pdf
Most still pay the license, question is more decide to opt out like HP and DELL for some their devices, and still include support for royalty free Codecs. Will they be litigated if they don't already have access to the patents those groups might claim the royalty free codecs use.
Pristine-Woodpecker@reddit
Those patent pools are basically sucker extortion.
BuchMaister@reddit
Like it or not - using those codec requires using those patents, for the licensees dealing with pool is much easier and cheaper than licensing from each and every company alone. For example in the article Nokia is independent patent holder, and as you see other companies didn't want to pay it royalties.
Pristine-Woodpecker@reddit
It does not. You do not need a patent license for AV1/VP9.
The fact that some random pool claims you do doesn't make it true.
BuchMaister@reddit
This is up to the court to decide if lawsuit will be served against some parties that use just the free AV1/VP9 without including/paying for propriety encoders\decoders, can you prove that the AV1/VP9 enc/dec implementation in the device do not infringe on exiting patents those groups or other patent holders have? Those groups and patent holder know how encoders like AV1 work and if there are patents it infringes they will present it in court (most likely they will find something as there are thousands of relevant patents in video enc/dec). Whether it's scare tactic or real lawsuit threat - who knows, as I said most companies already pay the large groups for H.264/H264 patents use, patents use for AV1 and VP9 (if there are) are automatically included, so there is little if any reason to come after someone. If the tide will change, and most manufactures will not include H.264/265/H.266 encoders at all and just the so called "free" codecs, we might see those lawsuits - right now it's not that relevant.
Yes I was talking about HP/DELL removing the HEVC support not AV1.
cafk@reddit
Possibly - but it's possible to join AOMedia to get access to the patent pool of Apple, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcomm and Tencent.
It's royalty free - but you give up some technology rights and technologies you develop which could be used in future AOMedia codecs.
pdp10@reddit
Patent holders always make claims like that.
Remember when Microsoft was going around, whispering to everyone that all of the Android manufacturers were paying them a fortune in royalties? During the era of Windows Phone 7 and 8? Then, somebody leaked the secret list of alleged patents, and and it was actually all garbage. If anybody was paying Microsoft before that, they sure weren't afterward.
BuchMaister@reddit
This is quite a different story here, there are 2 groups (that I know of) that pool thousands of relevant patents from dozens of companies, this is not some list of garbage patents. There are some independent Patent holders like Nokia that demand for their share of patents (outside of the bigger groups) - my guess Asus and Acer didn't want to pay those smaller patent holders - they may view it as some kind of extortion from "small fish" they can legally get away with, could be matter of (dis)agreement on the fee/licensing agreement. In any case this is a mess when there so many patent holders, paying for few patent groups is probably the preferred option for those OEMs if they decide to opt in for their devices.
gjallerhorns_only@reddit
I totally forgot about that. I think HTC was one of the companies that got fooled.
gorion@reddit
Yeap, thats bad.
H265 adoption is very low. I've only encountered it once in NVR, besides that everything i saw was either older AVC(h264) or AV1.
Even if You have HEVC hardware licensing shenanigans are outrageous and just anti consumer eg. paid hevc for media player in iwndows.
And we are speaking about last gen codec, because there is 5 year old VVC (h266) that is non existent.
I hope AV2 will come in timely manner.
autogyrophilia@reddit
It is used in streaming and TV broadcasting as well.
Also the dominant codec in the Apple ecosystem.
VVC seems like it was stillborn because it is both too complex to encode and decode, while everyone got scared by the HEVC situation and AV1 was an option.
AV1 software encoding is not great, arguably, the standard encoder has only just now become mature on reaching the version 4, though version 3 was also pretty usable.
RZ_Domain@reddit
You would think H.266 is DOA but ATSC insists on using it in the future for some reason
Zettinator@reddit
The fact that VVC is part of some broadcasting standard does not in fact mean that it will actually be used in practice.
autogyrophilia@reddit
It seems like there must be benefits from using the same family of codecs that could maybe reduce costs on very low powered embedded devices.
Other than that, no clue.
Pristine-Woodpecker@reddit
No, that's not really how it works. The building blocks are too different, they were developed what, a decade apart?
TruthHistorical7515@reddit
Technically 266 is extremely efficient
edparadox@reddit
Sure, but H.264 is still largely dominant in those sectors (like most).
Apple always like to push new solutions faster than in other ecosystems ; I suspect AV1 will become dominant quite soon.
VVC was already not wanted when AV1 was not even released and it persisted up to now.
AV1 got hardware support, but VVC's is non-existent.
It's been great since years, what are you talking about?
Which encoder do you refer to?
libaom-av1? It's the reference encoder, but that does not make it standard, hence why different encoders are used depending on where you look.It's also, from my experience, not the best.
autogyrophilia@reddit
Clearly it hasn't, otherwise there wouldn't be psy, psyex, hdr branches out there.
It still lacks the ability to detect keyframes, a basic feature. (it was disabled a while ago for not working properly)
SVT-AV1 has been the standard encoder for the last 6 years.
AOMedia Software Implementation Working Group to Bring AV1 to More Video Platforms
euvie@reddit
VVC is actually pretty widely deployed by the Chinese tech giants
edparadox@reddit
Any source to back up that claim?
nmkd@reddit
Huh? AV1 software encoding is excellent, and has been for years
autogyrophilia@reddit
I can throw x265 with a sane preset and CRF and get good results.
Until the last 2-3 years that wasn't really the case with svt-av1 sure it worked most of the time, but it lacked a lot of mechanisms to either take advantage of certain scenes being easy to encode or , much more impactful, not remove all detail into a blurry mess when a complex scene arrived.
This could be worked around with per scene encoding, as Netflix does and can be achieved with av1an. But it's not ideal. variance boost and related technologies fixes the issueÂ
It still has no mechanism for detecting scenes for key frames (av1an again). It also lacks a way to automatically use proper grain synthesis levels (av1an won't help here ,only the eyeometer)
OkTry9715@reddit
Every Chinese NVR or IP camera comes with h265, they do not care
DutchieTalking@reddit
I don't know about device support, but I see a lot more h265 than av1 in the pirating scene. AV1 isn't popular, the encoders are deemed kinda shit. It's got problems in a variety of areas. AV1 support is kinda minimal as is, so it's gonna take a long time before av2 gets any support.
arstarsta@reddit
My xiaomi/vivo phone can record in H265.
MPV video player is quite good.
There are sites for video download that have it.
wintrmt3@reddit
It's pretty common in circles where no one cares about IP.
pdp10@reddit
Network surveillance camera SoCs are indeed one place you see H.265. Another is Blu-ray discs, and a third small one is the controversial ATSC 3.0 broadcast television standard.
trparky@reddit
Tire fire? Is that worse than a dumpster fire?
pdp10@reddit
Have you burned tires?
trparky@reddit
Thankfully, no.
joel523@reddit
Software patents are honestly crazy, especially in an age where an LLM can design and write software so cheaply.
pdp10@reddit
It's funny you say that. LLMs cheaply and quickly crunch and regurgitate text, while patents are judged entirely based on novelty.
joel523@reddit
Well, if regurgitate text can now do physics, I'm ok with that. https://openai.com/index/new-result-theoretical-physics/
BuchMaister@reddit
Others disable the support on firmware level on their cheaper devices: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/hp-and-dell-disable-hevc-support-built-into-their-laptops-cpus/ If manufacturers don't want to pay the cents per device for the license, I think for some devices they should change the licensing method as to opt in, and make it clear that those licenses are not included with the device, and they need to be purchased separately if the user wants to use those codecs.
Zettinator@reddit
It's not about saving money, it's about legal security, i.e. avoiding sales bans like the one Acer and Asus are now experiencing.
BuchMaister@reddit
It's all starts and ends with money, if they paid for Nokia for what they asked - they would not be in the situation, it might be justifiable as codecs in terms of licenses are problematic and costly as there are many companies and groups that have (or claim for) patents relevant, paying each party adds up. In terms of what is preferable - probably disabling on firmware level for lower end devices and keeping on more premium devices is probably preferable than sales ban risk.
Zettinator@reddit
No, the situation would be much worse! Are you going to simply pay any bully that says "we have patents, pay up or else..."? Of course not. If you do that, it'll open the doors for more bullying. Patent trolls have to be kept at bay. In an ideal world, patents would actually be challenged far more often. This is unfortunately hard to do and rare in practice, and patent trolls benefit from that.
Spitfire1900@reddit
I think thatâs what Windows 7 did with DVDs. Windows XP and Vista shipped with DVD playback support, do get official DVD playback support in Windows 7 Media Player you needed to get a license, everyone just downloaded VLC instead.
wickedplayer494@reddit
Windows 8, actually, because that's when Windows Media Center stopped being included.
reallynotnick@reddit
10+ years into HEVC and this crap is still happening? Man no wonder VVC has had 0 uptake, I hope AV2 can come out of the gate swinging. (AV1 is fine, but Iâm interested in something with a bigger improvement over HEVC as thatâs when I think adoption will really take off)
Zettinator@reddit
It's not "still happening". It's much worse compared to when HEVC was new!
Nowadays you have to pay several patent pools for HEVC, and that still doesn't save you from individual companies (like Nokia in this case) going after you. Who knows, maybe there are some more companies with HEVC IP that are just waiting for the right moment to strike.
HP and Dell did the right thing.
pdp10@reddit
Standards-essential patents can give their holders more leverage over time, not less. Especially if the patents were submarine patents, otherwise obscured, or were previously part of a different patent pool.
AOM AV1 ended up as a more-conservative design than what Xiph.org originally proposed. I haven't checked in on AV2, but I imagine most of that unused innovation went into the research for AV2.
reallynotnick@reddit
I know they said they expect AV2 to be 30% lower bitrate than AV1. So I think that should be a big enough jump over H.265 that it could drive a whole cycle of adoption especially since AV1 is already slightly more efficient than H.265.
BlackenedGem@reddit
They key question is whether it's actually going to be lower bitrate for the same quality. These claims are made every generation and then it turns out to be a blurrier/smoothed video while you're gaslit into being told it's the same quality.
Kryohi@reddit
It took a loong time for AV1 to get good at medium-high bitrates, but it now seems to be mostly solved from what I've seen around the SVT-AV1-psy(-hdr) communities. A lot of changes have been upstreamed, and hopefully what has been learned will be used for AV2 encoders as well.
OutragedTux@reddit
Question: does something like installing vlc sidestep these patents? Say if I were using these machines under a penguin flavoured os?
hieronymous-cowherd@reddit
Check the wiki article that u/pdp10 linked. The licence permits standalone software like VLC to encode & decode without royalties. The catch for the Dell & HP models mentioned in the comments here is that hardware acceleration isn't available, so CPU must be used, regardless of the OS.
OutragedTux@reddit
That's a relief for us little people who also don't use computers provided by Acer or ASUS. It seems pretty incredible that stuff like this keeps happening around patents and multimedia formats, but I know these companies are a litigious bunch.
nanonan@reddit
You're a consumer, do whatever you like, well except develop a commercial product.
t3h@reddit
The VLC project is headquartered in France, and French law regards such software patents as invalid. So the patent holders can't shut down VLC.
For you, yes, VLC will play H.265 files regardless of if you hold the right kind of "license" or not. Technically, you're probably still meant to be paying for one - but it's extremely unlikely they'd come after you. Maybe if you were a large company and installed VLC on all your PCs.
HP / Asus / Acer can't pre-install VLC instead of licensing the codecs though, because they'd still owe the license just the same - and as large companies, patent holders would come after them.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
So no more ASUS hardware reviews by Derb8uer
_teslaTrooper@reddit
Plenty of stores in neighbouring countries ship to Germany, really depends on how heavily the ban is enforced but worst case is a few hours driving or train trip to a border.
itsaride@reddit
Probably get grey imports if that's his bag.
MumrikDK@reddit
Was he reviewing laptops and prebuilts?
The headline and article clearly indicates that's what this is about.
Marble_Wraith@reddit
đ¤ˇââď¸ Asus became dead to me long ago.
One of the most atrocious laptop experiences i ever had.
Acer i'm kind of "meh" about.
I mean they do have a monitor they're working on that i've had my eye on for some time. But other then that, they we're always "the other company" / competition. Rather then being outstanding for any product outright.
Deshke@reddit
the crazy part of this story is that asus just straight up redirects any support download to the maintenance page e.g trying to get efi updates from https://www.asus.com/de/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-x670e-creator-wifi/helpdesk_knowledge/ just redirects to https://dlcdnmkt.asus.com/custompage/maintenance.html
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
Such a weird world we live in.
Gnash_@reddit
one more reason to go the open codecs route
nmkd@reddit
AV1 supremacy
KommandoKodiak@reddit
Good more for us then
Sobeman@reddit
Yea because Nokia wouldn't try to file the same case in other countries. Try using your fucking brain.
oguzhan377@reddit
Last couple years nokia doing same...
Altruistic-Page-9907@reddit
What a pity, I had laptops of these two companies and never had any problems with them.
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AbhishMuk@reddit (OP)
Videocardz have combined multiple sources that were German, they appear to be the original English source for this news.