Windows HEVC video codec from Microsoft costs $0.99
apps.microsoft.com
apps.microsoft.com
Copy/paste this link into the browser:
ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq
Or, open command prompt, and type/paste:
start ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq
Click “Install”.
Source: https://reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/j58y6f/no_longer_fre...
It’s just a method of reducing cost - Microsoft did the same with the DVD playing codec. Their own DVD player wouldn’t function until a 3rd party codec was installed.
One should also think back to Microsoft’s approach to fonts. Where they made Frankenfonts instead of licensing the real ones.
You are joking, right? KMS activation is a total no-brainer, most of the times it is even already included in the build iso, so it "just works".
I always thought that everyone kinda understood that MS has been using piracy as a mean to popularize it's OS. Let some individual in Russia use pirated Windows, you will be paid anyway when this kid gets a job and starts using Windows in enterprise.
Ssssshhhhhh, you should read it as as their platform includes **legally-sufficient** protections against piracy
Even Apple said that all the added price of fairer labor practices in China (and the cost of anti-suicide nets on Foxconn factories), will be passed on to the consumers in the product prices.
Second -- how much do you think Microsoft makes from selling a $99/$139 license?
They can most definitely, absolutely, without a doubt afford to eat the cost.
I was talking about profits Microsoft exclusively makes from selling the $99/$139 Windows licenses to consumer, not the profits of Microsoft entirely. Two different vastly different things.
>Second -- how much do you think Microsoft makes from selling a $99/$139 license? They can most definitely, absolutely, without a doubt afford to eat the cost.
I dunno. How much does it make selling an OS at the price of two video games, while supporting it with updates for 10 years and paying devs US salaries to work on it for those 10 years?
Enterprise customers are Microsoft's bread and butter as those also buy the full AD, Azure, O365, Outlook, etc. package plus pay for support, but I can't imagine they make much money selling just an OS and 10 years worth of development for only $99/$139 to consumers who don't buy anything else out of the Microsoft ecosystem.
Keep in mind that Windows 95 retail box would cost consumers $209($409 in today's money), and you imagine that Microsoft is now making a huge profit on selling Windows to consumers today at 25% the original price with the much higher complexity and development costs of today's software?
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the consumer $99/$139 price points are actually loosing Microsoft money, similar how consoles are doing, but Microsoft is subsidizing it from the enterprise profits, to maintain the Windows market share monopoly, otherwise consumers would just switch to Linux if they had to pay more than a hundo for Windows.
In fact, you don't even have to pay for Windows (legal gray area). I activated my Windows 11 Pro copy with some CD key from Windows 7 I found online and it activated just fine. If Microsoft was actually making a profit on selling Windows licenses to consumers, they would have some serious DRM in place that would rival that of video-games, but the way I see it, it's not making them any money, which is why they don't bother enforcing even the most basic kinds of DRM, which in turn, explains to me why they penny pinch the $0.99.
Moreover, I believe Microsoft no longer charges for consumer Windows upgrades because they save more money by supporting fewer distinct versions of Windows (with security patches and compatibility with other Microsoft products sold to consumers like Office and games) than they previously made on consumer version upgrades.
Finally, the overwhelming majority of consumer Windows license sales are to OEMs bundling Windows with new PCs, and these licenses offload the burden of frontline technical support on the PC vendor.
Taking all these things into account, it would actually surprise me to learn that Microsoft loses money on consumer Windows.
As for "serious DRM", are you certain this would actually increase Windows sales enough to offset lost revenue (Office, Game Pass, search advertising, etc.) from consumers who would otherwise be running pirated Windows?
So what to make of the 99¢ codec charge? My guess is lawyers: one could make a reasonable argument that there is no material difference between bundling HEVC with Windows and making it available as a free download for all Windows users.
How exactly are you calculating Apple's margin on macOS and iOS? How are you attributing the sales price hardware to macOS/iOS, hardware, apps, tools and services, iWork, Photos, iMovie?
> I dunno. How much does it make selling an OS at the price of two video games, while supporting it with updates for 10 years and paying devs US salaries to work on it for those 10 years?
An absolute metric boatload.
> Keep in mind that Windows 95 retail box would cost consumers $209($409 in today's money), and you imagine that Microsoft is now making a huge profit on selling Windows to consumers today at 25% the original price with the much higher complexity and development costs of today's software?
Yes, that's how economies of scale work.
Windows 95 seems to have sold 40M copies total [1] whereas they sold about a billion copies of Windows 10 by 2019. [2]
[1] https://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/a-brief-history-of-wind...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/24/20881418/microsoft-device...
Are we talking OS only or everything else?…because there are two different answers for those.
The "crippling" of GPS lookup times and accuracy in cell phones. This was network assisted GPS locations, and each hit to the assistance server cost the carrier money (just the way it was licensed from the vendor IIRC). But RIM added a free maps app that would allow users to look up against the assistance server without having GPS in their plan (when it was a separate option).
The funny part was, when I applied the change, the tests didn't seem to work, and rolled it back within an hour or two. This was overnight, so when everyone woke up, they started testing their GPS and decided they'd been blocked and made a giant stink on internet forums, and the entire project was cancelled and never re-attempted.
You already have to purchase a Windows license
They are a trillion dollar company
Apple supports it out of the box
No, they don't. Apple just rides the hardware licenses, like almost all Windows machines do.
I never had to pay for any codecs as they always came bundled with my video player of choice (Pot, Gom, VLC, etc.)
Is this for people who don't know about third party video players?
As a hardware-only implementation of these video codecs is possible, they might be patentable. And then the software implementations would also fall under the patent.
Lucky for us, this is the point where EU law fragments into a zillion national laws, and each country court would decide something different. So corporations tend to not even try to enforce these patents, even if they acquired it. Unfortunately, the Unified Patent Court was created to clarify things like this, so expect this unstable status quo not to endure forever.
Now IANAL and reasoning beyond my competence, so I'd love some other HNers to tell me more.
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/hevc-video-extension...
I prefer having a newer codec with superior quality/size. The only reason you wouldn't use HEVC is if your hardware lacks support, the $0.99 version is for the ability to use the codec in software. It's illegal to use it without licensing, but like most things, hard to enforce. Mostly for company compliance.
No, the main problem with HEVC is that it is not licensed under royalty-free terms. In contrast, almost all commonly used internet formats and protocols are licensed under royalty-free terms so everyone is free to use and implement them without paying a licensing fee. Video has been an anomaly.
Imagine if HTML wasn't licensed under royalty-free terms. Or TCP/IP or HTTP or SMTP or any other internet format or protocol that you (probably) use every day. There's no reason why video needs to be a special case here.
Fortunately, video formats like AV1 (https://aomedia.org/) and audio formats like Opus (https://opus-codec.org/) exist for high quality, royalty-free video and audio coding.
These formats are deployed in the real world right now. YouTube, for example, makes extensive use of both. If you have a browser which supports AV1 (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, but not Safari yet), you can see if a YouTube video is playing back in AV1 by right-clicking on the video and selecting "Stats for Nerds".
Anyone know how I can play AV1 using hardware decoding?
Personally I'd much rather use an open standard, and the fact it's better than HEVC doesn't hurt either.
https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/entertainment/av1-open-...
OEM can have their codec from elsewhere as any modern GPU includes it and pays licensing fees.
As a reminder, also Apple had similar things back in the days. Sadly I can not remember what it was good enough to find it. It was related to camera or video codec maybe a long time ago. (Hope someone remembers what it was)
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/24/apples-0-99-facetime-ch...
Right now it is surely confusing that MS defaults to suggesting paying for a software codec, when most have already paid for it in hardware they are using.
I don't get why Microsoft is charging for the CODEC when it can be distributed for free.
>> HEVC Advance will not seek a license or royalties on HEVC functionality implemented in application layer software downloaded to mobile devices or personal computers after the initial sale of the device, where the HEVC encoding or decoding is fully executed in software on a general purpose CPU.
From the product description,
>> These extensions are designed to take advantage of hardware capabilities on some newer devices— including those with an Intel 7th Generation Core processor and newer GPU
So it would appear that the codec does not conform to the requirements of the free license.
Equally it implies that the codec cannot be bundled in Windows itself (license free) as that is not "application software".
I get that charging 99c seems petty for a company making billions, but it does have the effect of "counting" licensees. In other words it is not a hindrance to those who need it, but it stops ms from having to pay on the count of "every windows copy sold". I don't have any insight on the actual license cost - it may be pennies, or it may be substantially > $1 - but the 99c does make an accurate counter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...
HEVC licensing is a mess. You're better off with AV1.
I believe it's for a DVD codex not HEVC.
Originally you had to pay separately for H.264 (not sure if 265 was originally available) on the Pi but I think that's not the case anymore.
Not too unusual.