Are there any web browsers out there that can playback the H.265 / MPEG-4 HEVC codec in a html5 video element? On what platform or hardware?
I heard rumours about HEVC support in Edge when hardware decoding is available. With current GPUs and CPUs shipping with HEVC hardware decoding I wonder which other browser vendors are following. Firefox already works like this for H.264
It works in IE and Edge but only if there is hardware support. It's also reported to work in Android browser and Chrome for Android on some devices that have hardware support.
Source: https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc
n.b. If you strive to use h.265 to embed better quality video in your web content you should also consider transcoding and including webm: http://caniuse.com/webm/embed/. Support is flaky as well, but will absolutely improve rapidly as chip manufacturers are increasingly including hardware acceleration for both standards (HEVC and VP9)
No, no browser supports H.265. And wide support is not likely to be added in the near future.
EDIT:
I updated the question because there are reports of it working in Edge when hardware decoding is available.
This is a good point.
In this case, the browser still does not support it. It is offloading decoding to the OS (Windows), and the OS is offloading to the hardware. But the result is the same as having browser support. This becomes cheaper, because the license was paid for by the chip company.
Background:
H.265 licensing has historically been extremely expensive. In some cases orders of magnitude more expensive than H.264. MPEG-LA and HEVC Advance patent pools expected companies like apple and Microsoft to pay for it. But they got too greedy (specifically HEVC Advance) by eliminating price caps, so Microsoft would have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for H.265, where H.264 caps out in the low millions. HEVC Advance has changed the licensing policy, but it may be too late, as google Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Cisco, Mozilla and others are developing a royalty free alternative (under the name Alliance for Open Media) so online video can never be held hostage again.
Chromium can support h.265 when compiled with the aforementioned codec enabled during compilation.
Check it out - https://github.com/henrypp/chromium/releases
Those are all 64 bit releases, so make sure you install them on 64 Bit Windows only.
Once installed try to play the "first" video here - http://www.h265files.com/embed-h265-video.php
That way you will know if its working or not :)
Edge on Windows 10 supports HEVC if the appropriate app is installed from the Microsoft Store.
Paid: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/hevc-video-extensions/9nmzlz57r3t7?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Free: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9n4wgh0z6vhq?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
