However, the onus shifts to Microsoft for a pure software decoder bundled with the OS. While the exact royalty terms for the HEVC playback capability in Windows 10 remain a closely guarded secret, MultiCoreWare's Tom Vaughan believes that the licensing for systems with a hardware decoder available is handled by the device OEM. We initially believed patent licensing to be the issue. Netflix Stream Capped at 1080p / 5.8 Mbps on the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U with the Windows 10 FCU Instead of 4K, FCU restricts them to 1080p streams at 5.8 Mbps (as those are encoded in AVC). While this is a minor inconvenience at best, a more irritating issue is the one for users with systems capable of Netflix 4K playback. However, users of the Movies and TV app built into Windows 10 FCU or software relying on the OS decoders such as Plex will find HEVC videos playing back with a blank screen. The missing HEVC decoder is not a factor for users playing back media through open source applications such as Kodi, MPC-HC, or VLC. We reached out to Microsoft to clear things up. This has led to plenty of erroneous speculation in the user community. It turned out to be even more puzzling when FCU was released to the stable ring.
There had been complaints regarding the missing HEVC decoder when the FCU was in the Insider Preview stage. One of the aspects that didn't get much coverage in the tech press was the change in Microsoft's approach to the bundled video decoders. The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (FCU) came with a host of welcome changes.